


Lionheart

by Ruuuka



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Not much kinky gore or whump there though, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Pre-Thor (2011), Violence tag to avoid risks from Ch5, and a little in-between
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 77,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuuka/pseuds/Ruuuka
Summary: Big tacky humdrum slow-burn Sifki romcomdrama, with horse, instant soup and weird interpretations of 'phrensheep'. Loki is a dweeb. Sif is a muscle head. Thor is being brainwashed by hippies. Some mythology, too, distorted as Marvel likes it. Wantonly paced, not very wisely thought through.
Relationships: Loki & Sif (Marvel), Loki & Thor (Marvel), Loki & Warriors Three (Marvel), Loki/Sif (Marvel)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

_Breathe in, breathe out  
_ _Let the human in_

-o-O-o-

At the beginning of the maiden’s palace career, Loki kept marvelling at how much blood she was capable of losing without letting others notice her faintness. And she was but a young lass at that time; they were all practically children, barely past the first milestone of their lives, which had been represented by a trial of martial expertise. It was a regular occurrence started barely a century before: many had been lost in the wars fought among the realms, and the kingdom needed strong arms to replace them. The contest was a chance to gain the King’s recognition, the first step towards ultimate glory: proving strength, stamina, bravery, mercy. Killing and mutilation was forbidden, but anything else was approved. Those who pleased the judges were deemed worthy of living in the palace and improving their abilities further for later services.

Sif was the first female challenger in the trial’s commonly known history. No woman born outside the land of Valkyries was remembered for glorious deeds in the grandest battles. Even those who nurtured some sort of combat skill lacked the ambition to challenge the elite warriors. And now there was this slender girl intruding the men’s arena, swirling all around the appointed battle ground, thrusting her way through the monstrous clashes only sometimes aimed at her, like the whole clamour and the ground-shaking blows would have escaped her attention, her look always fixed solely on her next target. She would race to hunt them down regardless of any other assaults and opportunities that tried crossing her path. Her lean body took and dealt way more damage than it promised: despite her reckless and highly self-destructive methods, she decorated the battle ground with the unconscious bodies she had crippled, neatly throwing them on top of each other into heaps during their fall with the aid of her fist, knee or jungle knife. Meanwhile, the darkest night’s flames flared in her eyes, she sucked air in through clenched teeth in a fast pace, sweat rolled down her figure like she was standing under a steaming waterfall. Why she was in such hurry remained unclear until the end.

“The maiden is still up! Loki, look! It is female, isn’t it?” Thor wondered on the platform they currently occupied.

“Most likely,” Loki muttered next to him with an expert’s seriousness as he studied the restless figure at the opposite end of the field. The seats next to the king would have yielded a view better than this at her, but his brother was never able to sit tight for longer than a few minutes, so once again the two boys were forced to excuse themselves from Father’s presence and roam the arena among the common folks instead. But running around like this also had its own perks: though they missed and exhaustive view at the battle tactics used, which was a primary aspect for the judges, all elderly veterans, sitting in a row beneath the King’s, they could be closer to the action itself. From the area around the colosseum appointed for the occasion, they saw the warriors’ expression of fervour, pain, persistence, anger. They witnessed each new tearing and stain. They heard their powerful breaths and their beastly groans when attacking, pushing back an assault or receiving damage more severe than expected. They heard the deafening clashes of blades and armour, maces and bones. The scent of stained dirt and rock was but an incidental addition. The atmosphere was equally intoxicating during each trial.

The two brothers returned to their seats as the end of the battle was called, on the King’s left, in order of age as required, the oldest sitting next to the aging man.

A handful of challengers that were still standing gathered around facing the high pedestal with the royals and the judges. The young maiden stood among the other dazed figures – some just as lanky as her and some way sturdier – like the notion of pain had been missing from her book, or she hadn’t learned how to respond to it. She was fighting a visible battle with herself: she strained her muscles to stand unswaying. This blunt level of denying the obvious was a peculiar sight.

Though the land was in want of soldiers, not all victors were selected. The brothers were uninterested in the lengthy praise and condemnation of each warrior’s performance; after all, they had eyes to see for themselves.

“A horde of cripples,” Loki scorned at their faintness. “Not an army _I’d_ feel safe in.”

“Well, now they’re quite spent,’ Thor agreed with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “Though you have to admit they were glorious at their peak.”

“That’s a measly excuse at the gates of Valhalla after you’re cut down in the war.”

“I will definitely die on my peak.”

“And I won’t die at all.”

“Silence,” Odin warned, causing them to sit still for a minute.

“Everyone dies, brother,” Thor then shared the grand news whispering.

“Not if you’re a sorcerer,” Loki bragged in a matching volume. “I’ll cast a spell that makes me live forever.”

“Then make me live forever, too.”

“Only if you vow to be my servant.”

“Never that!” the blond pointed out firmly, earning and iron grasp on his skull from the King as he was forced to turn forward.

“I’ve read so,” Loki muttered under his breath. “If I do the spell, those who are granted immortality will be bound to my servitude forever. Isn’t that amazing? I can have an immortal army answering only to me.”

“I’ll also have that when I’m King,” the older prince pursued. “I’ll choose only the best of the best for the Royal Army, they will all be invincible and I’ll march on with them forever.”

“ _If_ you’re King,” Loki sang cheerily because he knew it riled his brother up, and he enjoyed that to no end.

“I will be, you’ll see! We’ll both be kings,” Thor snapped.

“But if you want to be an immortal king, you’ll have to be my subordinate king still.”

“Then I’ll just be a normal king, and I’ll be so valorous that the Norns will let me return after I die.”

“As if that would work. Then many others would have done that.”

“Well, maybe they have.”

“I don’t think anyone returns from the dead, brother. The world would be too small for all the people coming back and the ones being newly born.”

Loki seemed to have won; they gazed towards the arena in silence for a minute. Thor spoke up suddenly: “Find a spell that makes me live forever with you but not being your servant.”

Loki snorted at his expression that bore utter seriousness, as if their conversation so far had been non-existent. But he was used to his brother’s boldly expressed ignorance, so he played along. “I might. But it will cost a fortune to you.”

“Deal!” Thor beamed, and their fists bumped to seal it.

“Listen to the advisors,” Odin interrupted, his tone unswayed by his suspected anger. “They are the guides for your decisions, and your attention to them is the seal on your fate.”

“But it’s so tedious to observe while I can’t take part in it,” Thor complained. “I wish I’d be allowed to face this trial again, Father. I want to spar with all these new challengers every single time. That would be fun.”

Loki grunted in half-hearted disagreement. He remembered it as a pain; the two princes forced to participate by respective grown-ups as a gesture of solidarity towards the system they were to rule later, he had been sent to take the trial on at a different time, because on the training grounds he tended to hide behind his brother that was more than happy to shield him from the majority of the assaults, bathing in his own heroism.

Although after these training sessions Mother usually scolded her younger son in her gentle tone ( _Is that what I’ve been teaching you?_ ), the audience applauded both of them with equal politeness. Praise was more convenient to gain by enforcing it than through the glory mentioned in the tutoring the princes received: Loki had figured it out quite early on, and so these ethical codes never really filled up with meaning for him.

“I’d spar with the biggest last, so the people have something to cheer for all along,” the blond child kept on plotting semi-loudly.

“Would you also spar with the maiden?” Loki was curious to know.

“Her, I’d offer the option to decide if she wanted to face my wrath, and let her off without tease if she said no.”

“And if she said yes?”

“Then I’d honour her bravery by not holding back, of course.”

“And if she won?”

Thor’s cheery pat on his brother’s shoulder showed appreciation of the joke.

“It is but a minor scratch, my Lords,” the girl’s voice drew their attention to itself; it was strong, steady and slightly suffocated.

The judges smirked at each other, the audience echoed with modest chuckles: the gentle stream of blood trickling down her left thigh obviously came from a wound far beyond minor, but her healthy uphold and firm posture denied that supposition.

“Why are you here, young lass?” asked one of the judges, casting a flat look at her, chin raised.

“With all due respect, my name is Sif. I want to serve His Majesty with my blade.”

“You’ve come far for such a distant mirage.”

The scorn was clear, and her response the more yielding: “I did work hard for this day, with my own perspectives, at least. But I trust and respect your judgement, whatever it may be.”

The elders looked at each other.

“You wiped out a significant part of the contestants,” said another. “I, for one, see your remarkable effort in it. But your ways are unlearned and foolish, like the folks on the borderlands. We cannot say well how many of those fallen before you today will not stand again.”

“There are none of such,” Odin said unexpectedly. “Although it’s the Norns’ grace towards them, not her expertise. What would your decision be?”

It took a minute’s murmur among the judges before the answer got ready. However, Odin stopped it with a raised palm, then he spoke to his sons quietly: “How would _you_ decide?”

The boys stared back at him dumbfounded; the strange maiden’s fate wasn’t exactly on their minds. Thor was the first to shrug in the end. “I’d take her in.”

“And why is that?”

“She said she wanted to serve the King. That’s what we seek people for, isn’t it?”

The unchanged rigour on Odin’s face indicated no approval. Thus, when his look turned to his younger son, Loki shook his head, although he couldn’t care less either, and he explained unasked: “She may have the ambition, but she’s a woman, so she’ll never be a strong hand in battle. She ought to understand where she belongs and direct this passion onto the right thing.”

“Like what?”

The younger child pursed his lips in reluctant brooding. “Sewing,” he guessed as an example, which made Thor laugh out loud heedlessly of the environment.

The King remained serious against their cheer but didn’t tell which answer he found appropriate. He turned forward instead and signalled the judges to reveal their decision. The two brothers didn’t waste another thought on the matter when the maiden ended up among the ones that passed.

However, as she turned to leave along the others, without a respectful bow, mind you, the boys winced simultaneously at the wetness over her belt.

“That’s a kidney,” Loki muttered.

“I’ve had that once, takes at least three days to stop oozing,” Thor announced. “And I wanted to converse with her tonight.”

“No chance, brother.”

“But she seems quite fine, perhaps-“

“It’s only the battle fever holding her up, wears off any minute now. She won’t be standing by the welcome feast.”

Thor’s hopeful idea burst out while they were leaving the arena in the Royal Couple’s wake: “She may be a machine!”

“Like a spy-bot?” Loki mused.

“No, like a hero-bot. Can’t you see she’s here to fight for the King later?”

“That’s the point, Thor. This position is the best way to infiltrate the land.”

“To filth-what? Why would she make the land filthy?”

Loki’s head followed his eye roll to give emphasis to the gesture. “To get near the King and slice his throat, or gather intel,” he clarified.

“Gather what?”

“To find out the King’s secrets, you nitwit. We might just save Asgard if we know about her plans, we could even reveal the mastermind behind her.”

“Awesome! We’ll play this tomorrow at field time!”

“I’ll be the King!” Loki hurried to announce in high spirits.

“But then who’ll attack and who’ll protect him?” Thor looked at him in dismay.

“Fine, I’ll be your spy machine,” the younger prince sighed.

“And I’ll be commander of the defence squad!”

“You’ll die like you always do.”

“Not this time, brother.”

Loki chuckled at the blond’s unbroken faith, knowing Thor had never tried resisting his little brother’s heartbroken pleads for victory before.

The maiden did turn up at the feast. Pale, with dark circles under her eyes, casting nervous glances around. She must have escaped the infirmary in secret, Loki derived during his favourite pastime, collecting people’s stories, the ones untold: secrets, weaknesses, things to utilise if he ever needed a favour or so. He observed her along the other newcomers, already excited about the things he would learn, and with them, the new opportunities.

That young girl named Sif was smashingly easy to figure out, but she hadn’t shown anything of use so far: what could such a headstrong maiden have helped him at? The only thing Loki could suspect was predicted easiness to fool her, since she didn’t seem particularly bright, starting with the fact that she shouldn’t have stopped consuming the fluids regardless of the pain, because proper nourishment would have hastened the recovery of that sliced-up kidney after it knitted itself back up.

But her brevity countered that useful lack of wits: Loki knew well that it required a great deal of courage to appear here against the strict instructions and the mercilessly judging crowds. And that lessened the chances of blackmailing, this kind of people simply pushed against the threats until they (or their opponents, occasionally) broke. Even now, she was sitting at a central chair instead of a corner, providing a great target to notice from all directions; eating only a few bites occasionally, swallowing with difficulty from purposeful thirst, and answering any taunts firmly, retorting in a joking manner, no matter what kinds of comments were thrown her way.

Late into the night, she was the only female warrior at the feast, all other women left were whores and servers. And she made sure not to be mistaken with them, clad in her battle attire of raw leather up to her neck. Nobody ever took her for a warrior, though: both cheery men and working maidens were aware of her femininity and looked at her presence as uninvited, awkward, out-of-place. She held up against it with astonishing firmness, straightening her back occasionally, though the position of her legs showed she was not at all sitting in comfort.

She may have been lucky today, but she was already on the way down, Loki thought. As things looked now, she was alone, and alone, a woman would never stand long on foreign grounds. He detected no attractive features under her current sickly mask; that meant she could never find protectors among men, and she wouldn’t have fit into Loki’s schemes either, if he had tried to make her convince or divert anyone to his favour. Headstrong, no brains and no looks then – it meant she was nothing for him, so it would be a waste of his precious mental resources to keep her in the palace. It was a tad disappointing, to be honest, since her uniqueness could have served as a tool for intricacies that no one here was acquainted with.

Then again, it wasn’t a grand loss: just lately, Loki had secretly started familiarising with the art of mind control, magic whispers, planting ideas into others’ heads, so later he’d be able to do these all without external aid. But that was a long way to go, naturally, it was heavy sorcery, wouldn’t happen by tomorrow. For tonight, he settled with plucking white meat and grapes at the _quiet end_ of the hall, with a distant relative, the mawkishly fair Baldur, and the appallingly silent newcomer soon to be known as Hogun.

Soon, he observed the sight bemused: his brother hopped on the bench opposite Sif and chatted her up out of the blue. The blond boy had been preoccupied with his own curiosity during the feast, and he was completely ignorant towards the hostile air around her that was increasing in proportion with the fevered flush on her cheeks and the number of insults she repelled. He was an incurable oaf; ever since they were little, Loki remembered him approaching any creatures bigger than a new-born squirrel, often forcing his family or servants to drag him away from mortal danger. His ever-flying spirit was powerful, it could tame the senseless offspring of any species for the moment, unless its parent appeared to smear the kidnappers’ heads on the wall.

Loki grinned into a bite of meat at the roar of laughter rising up around the two figures. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the postures talked about Thor being the subject of amusement after the maiden’s calmly uttered comment. The next words those two exchanged, both unafraid to look at the other, were accompanied by guffaws from the gathering audience at each turn, which might or might not have fit the subject of their conversation – the reason for laughter didn’t matter this deep into the celebrative night.

With no one around to save him this time, Thor left the girl’s company on his own shortly afterwards, with a grin somewhat faded. The laughter of the drunken mass barely died by the time he sat down next to Loki, who already had a sympathetic face ready for him.

“Nice try, though,” he noted, patting Thor’s shoulder comfortingly.

The blond shrugged. “She doesn’t know yet that she’s among friends. I’m sure she’ll be braver later.”

“Braver than someone who sends a royalty on his way when he tries courting her?”

“I didn’t court her.”

“All right then. Did she tell why she entered this trial?”

“Alas! I forgot to ask that,” Thor exclaimed, slamming the table so it shook in its entire length; he always grew more savage when riled up in a festive atmosphere.

“So you did court her instead.”

“For the thousandth time, I did not.”

“And who else shares your view at that?”

“I know the truth, and that’s what really matters, brother.”

“Is it? If truth has such power, how come the greatest rulers are the greatest deceivers of all times?”

“You take away a lot of nonsense from those books. You ought to train some more instead or you’ll end up as the frailest among all these promising warriors,” Thor noted and ruffled his protesting brother’s hair with both hands. They were laughing when Loki finally pushed him away.

“That’s right, keep underestimating me; it is only to my advantage,” he said then, and the flick of his palm sent a green flash at the blond’s ribs, causing him to jerk and tumble off the seat.

“How did you do that?” Thor inquired while clambering back up, with amazement rather than pain in his voice.

“Just learnt it from Mother.”

“Is it a combat spell? Have you perfected it? Can you do bigger too?”

“How is it not big enough when it was able to move the biggest, heaviest boulder in the realm?”

The older one was overwhelmed with awe. “It did? When will you show me?”

“Thor, I just did.”

The corner of Loki’s mouth twitched in camouflaged amusement while his brother actually glanced around. “Where is that boulder?”

“It’s right in here, can’t you hear it?” the younger prince rammed away on the fair head with the heel of his palm.

“Oh, brother, you’ll pay for that!” Thor yelled before tackling the thin boy. “Come on, afraid to fight me face to face? Where is your magic now, huh?”

Loki could hardly speak from laughter as he fought to push the stronger one off himself. “It-it doesn’t work-… like that!” he pressed through between laughs. “I need to con-concentrate-“

Thor hummed while he let go of him, pale eyebrows in a young frown. “That doesn’t do you good in the heat of a battle.”

“Practice will help that,” Loki reassured him. “And you – you always make a great meat shield with that big head of yours.”

“Talking about big head, I bet you’re burning to show off with your new talent.”

“Thor, _talent_ is a completely different word. My talent is vast and constant. This one is just a new _spell_ , a mere speck of dust in-“

“Whatever it is, let’s try it out. We should have a competition tomorrow, after the king is saved.”

“There won’t be time, it’s a short trip full of work to do.”

Thor wailed in torment. “Norns, it’ll be a diplomatic visit. Those endless chatters of nothing!”

“They’re a necessary exchange of lies and honey traps for a healthy relationship, Thor.”

“Then _you_ do it if you like it that much.”

“Why gladly,” Loki leaned back with an overacted, majestic air around his young form. “I’ll do the diplomacy when we’re old enough, and the speeches, and I’ll work out the strategies to conquer the world, you like that?”

“Oh, I do, Loki.”

“Nothing is for free, though. In exchange, you’ll have to be commander of my Royal Army and always battle in the front lines so I have as little loss in dispensable manpower as possible.”

“Yes! You couldn’t even stop waiiiit-“

“Sounds fun, doesn’t it?” Loki cooed, an elbow supporting him on the table as he observed his brother’s gradual enlightenment.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Thor protested. “You can’t be king without me, that’s not possible.”

“It is actually quite possible, brother. Even when not counting your excessive lack of wit, there is a fifty percent chance.”

“Our next spar decides, how about that?”

“I don’t think Father is ever going to rely on that in his choice.”

“Or at least you hope so because then I’d win against you with one hand,” the blond said, now with more interest in the plate of meats just placed near him by a servant.

The notion caused the younger prince frown. “I’ll prove you wrong tomorrow,” he decided. “ _After_ the trip, around sunset when Father retreats for his quiet work. I know a place the gatekeeper can’t see.”

“There is no such place,” Thor uttered while stuffing bread into his meat-filled mouth.

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Trust me, you haven’t seen half of the city yet, or any of the places where Mother and Father never send us.”

“And have you?”

“No,” Loki lied simply under the interested gaze on him, knowing Thor was never suspicious enough to keep interrogating.

And as expected, the blond child returned to his meal promptly. “He’d catch us heading there anyway,” he pointed out. “And you hate being with me during your recess.”

“Because there is only so much of your dotish fancies I can endure in a day, Thor.”

“Dotish fancies, you and your smart words,” laughed the accused.

Loki leaned closer to the boy shovelling food onto his golden plate, and he lowered his voice: “I have an invisibility gem hidden in my room. I’ll study its use tonight.”

“In just one night? Your brains are amazing, Loki,” Thor gushed. “I wish I could have that beside my muscle strength; then I’d be the ultimate god of invincibility.”

“We can be that together then.”

“But only if we merge, like this!”

Loki’s protest drowned in the arms as Thor hugged him close for a tease, because he knew how much his little brother hated the bone-crunching display of affection.

-T-T-T-

They scarcely remember all these details from such a distance now. It was hundreds of years ago, even before the Lady Sif unfolded and became the stranger he pretends to know to an extent today.

Today, when their looks meet, it happens through the faintest memory of that night, and several centuries more of disconnection: battles and feasts, misadventures led by Thor, a broken treaty with the Jotnar, an unadmitted impersonation of King Odin, her exile under this image, the destruction of Home, a war that neither of them fought but returned to a land still recovering in its wake. And through a wall both glass and what humans tend to mistake for magic, a mixture of Earthen and Asgardian technology. A veil of surprise on their eyes. His a momentary stun, hers a lengthier process working in her since yesterday. His because she’s here, hers because he’s alive at all.

Not even for the first time, he takes up the task of breaking the silence. “Sif,” he smiles and stands up straight before the barrier, hands behind him, heels snapping together. “You came all the way to free me? How nice. I’m ready.”

“Oh, are you? There is nowhere to rush, why not stay in a bit longer?”

He displays the smirk that’s deliberately kept from the maiden’s expression. “Well, you know, it’s so narrow in my cell, and the comfort level…” He trails off and bends closer, lowering his voice trustfully. “How did you get out?”

“I’ve never been in there, my Prince.”

The fraud that has once again played the Universe by his return observes with amusement as she sits down on the single chair facing the glass wall. “You’re actually mingling in to hide,” he notes with apparent surprise.

She is unfazed by his look that points out the peculiarity of her earthly attire: the thin black coat over a high white top, her hair loose but the front locks kept at bay in the back.

“I’m not hiding. I had the opportunity to explain my harmless intentions upon encounter. Most unfortunate that you, on the other hand, were hindered at using your most valuable tool for defence. You were found with your mouth sewn shut, as I heard.”

It’s impossible to ignore his tensing up at the note; he doesn’t care to hide his dismay over the remembrance while he swings from heel to toe. “A curse I earned with another twisted scheme. Thankfully, it’s over now.”

“Yes, the thread was removed while you were in a delirium. But is the curse itself gone?” She can see she almost managed to catch him off-guard with the idea. Almost.

“Would I be a fool to let it linger on?” he wonders.

“What scheme then?” she inquires, her tone intent to show she’s not up for a banter.

And if asked, she’d swear Loki holds a pause merely for the drama before his answer: “Surviving.”

“Surviving,” she repeats softly. “What for?”

“A basic instinct, perhaps,” His apologetic tone is to counter her challenging question, aiming for her compassion. But she doesn’t fall for his silver tongue.

After a heavy silence, she gives up fighting her composure: her inhale is audible as she leans closer, her jaw tense, her voice forcibly low: “How could you do that to him?”

“ _Him_?” he asks like he doesn’t know what she means.

“Thor,” she clarifies simply. “You’ve fooled us all repeatedly, and he still kept on believing in you. You’re the brother he’s never abandoned until this day. You let him fight alone, and then mourn you for years, while you weren’t even gone.”

His eyebrows run up in mock curiosity. “How about you? Weren’t you living your own ambitions while he fought Thanos thinking he was the last one alive?”

“I was sent to the other corner of the world by _Odin_ , wasn’t I?” she spits, unable to hold her temper and resist his guidance. “I was fighting to restore the balance your foolish acts tipped over. What were _you_ doing?”

His gaze is fixed on her face stiffly. “I was on an unwilled journey myself.”

She knows the intensity of that stare well, perhaps more than he believes; it’s pretended attention, to prevent turning his gaze away while he’s lying or giving a tricky answer.

“How did you survive? Were you there at all?”

 _There_ … another moment that hurts to remember. But this time, his face doesn’t reveal it. She isn’t sure what gives him away. Perhaps all the years spent on common battle grounds.

“I grabbed an opportunity that presented itself,” he says. “That’s all, not worth a breath.”

She shakes her head. “Grabbing opportunities, is that what you call slithering away from trouble?”

His smile is rather pleasant. “And your insight is impeccable, even when unintended.”

She doesn’t expect a straight answer, only to walk more vain circles around the mystery he is guarding. They have plenty of time ahead for that, as things are now. Today, she moves down on her agenda: a small part of the things she’s burning to spit into his face. The next point pleasures the vengeful shade in her heart especially.

“Thor won’t be coming to get you out any soon, by the way, in case you expect it. He’s received the news that you’re alive, and do you know what he sent back?”

Loki leers at her sideways. “His regards?”

“Quoting: _I’m overjoyed to hear he’s sound and kept safe. Can’t wait to meet up with him next year._ ”

His amused chuckle is quite honest, the downcast look shows he considers it fair judgement.

“I understand I ought to make myself at home here. Say, is there a chance for me to get something to read?”

-o-O-o-

He figured out quite soon that Sif hadn’t appeared at the feast because she was particularly witless, but because she knew she had to show herself. That had been the night of introduction. She might or might not have gone into the same depths in her derivation as Loki did, but she certainly seemed to have a feel on the matter: that she had to let others know about her presence if she intended to stay _in_ the palace for a long time; and her relentless work indicated a burning determination to do so, which she never cared to keep private but it took a while until it came into the open.

She had a hard time fitting in. Her gender was one thing, but the different treatment she received due to it was not overlooked by the other trainees either. She had her separate quarters, like the princes. And Mother allowed her access to the royal bath at a specific hour of the day. Well, it was obvious she couldn’t share the common bathing area, but it was more advantageous for people to ignore that, it gave an excuse to hate her for her privilege. It was always a pleasure to bash away on someone, especially in gangs.

However, Sif was not the ideal material for that, as it soon occurred. While sneakily watching over private occurrences on the palace grounds, Loki learned she was simply too tough to be brought down, too sturdy in her personality, too vengeful, too dark in her eyes, too resilient to stay on the ground. Apart from emitting the right kinds of cries at the right moments, she did seem like an intelligent machine that was unable to comprehend the idea of pain and exhaustion, either mental or physical. People occasionally tried spying on her to see if she slept. If she ate and took dumps. Lucky for her, her private sphere was under the Queen’s protection.

That encouraged Thor’s friendliness, although in his own ways, and it didn’t go with the highest of compliments when a spoilt, conceited royalty warmed up to you. His playful insults, which only Loki knew to be intended as good-natured approaches, usually went with harsh laughter in the freshly accumulated mob surrounding him, practically reinforcing the habit through the positive reception, without Thor having an idea what he was really inducing in the fiery maiden with his attitude. Sif played along nevertheless, always to the very end, until the gleeful attention finally got diverted away from her further mockery; her retorts burned, directing the amusement back at the golden prince, who laughed along anyway. Such words couldn’t harm him, after all: verbal and physical spars were common plays among men, never diminishing the underlying mutual respect. Men in the same room were always a team, a troop. A flock, as Loki enjoyed thinking of them lately, meaning their sheepish inability to think for themselves when required. But whatever they were, they were a tight, closed group. They belonged, and this maiden had gotten the hint with surprising swiftness after her arrival: she was not in the flock. This folk was yet to place the woman-warrior halfling in their minds, and it showed in their baffled distance kept. Sif was well aware that she stood alone in need. Perhaps that’s why she never allowed need for herself. She stood all the time, save when out of sight.

It was a very much unintended coincidence that Loki found the latter out, although he’d been planning to track down the peculiarly ambitious maiden in her private hours. Just not right then, while he was more interested in flipping tables, yelling storms. 

“I’ve tackled the beast to the death, there was no other choice.” It all started with that announcement. “He’d have fought me eternally, you know their kind. I sent the mother back to nurture its offspring: I have no taste for senseless murder.”

“The more for overstatement,” Loki threw it easily across the training ground.

“Which part of this can be overstated, brother, pray?” Thor snapped merrily amidst the group’s snicker. “The death of one beast, or the life of the other?”

“The tackling, for instance. No wonder you strived to remain alone in this battle: I notice this noble audience is yet to witness the heart-wrenching run from your self-induced predicaments.”

“Like I’d ever run, you liesmith,” the blond pointed at him with a tattered spear.

“Well, I’ve seen you run, not once,” Loki leered, “but I understand why you’d keep this unannounced.”

“Fine, sometimes there was no other choice, but you must have noted I never once asked for your help either.”

“Another overstatement, probably, but it definitely went unheard, as I always get lost in admiring the sight,” the younger prince chuckled along with the others, and Thor welcomed the assault of friendly tosses on his shoulder; quite meekly for his status, which tugged on a nerve around his brother’s jaw, not for the first time. Had they given Loki the excuse by disrespecting him in such a way, they’d been leaving the scene squealing apologies and carrying one or two bleeding comrades by now. Loki knew no mercy at keeping to formal etiquettes, especially since these… _less perceptive_ people from nowhere got to mingle into their formerly private trainings; but it lost its significance when his only equal preferred not to heed them. And the pattern was almost always the same – there came the blow.

“I wouldn’t willingly join in a fight either, with the way you do combat,” Thor taunted. The entire group seemed to understand: Loki barely refrained from dropping his jaw in dismay as one near him, equally blond but way more taken to ladies, explained _him_ by flailing his arms around, clearly referring to the way Loki used his daggers to slice up the opponents.

A knife’s edge at the young man’s tongue inside his mouth, that would have clarified everything; but against this many of them, Loki was not witless to stand up for real. “I congratulate your expertise,” he nodded instead. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate it against me in an actual duel.”

“Ah, no way,” laughed the man. “I’d rather apologise for my rash behaviour, it was but a jest. I forget that you prefer such entertainment one-sided.”

“What is this compliance, Fandral the Swank?” Loki inquired, relishing the insulted twitch of his opponent’s pale eyebrows. “Are you unconfident in your way with the blade, after all?”

“Not in my blade, I assure you; even the dullest steel in my hand is enough for facing any monster.”

The younger prince flashed his shyest smile. “Yet you shake before the bumbling of someone like me.”

“Your Highness, my distrust is more in your own desire for a clean fight out in the open. I’m no beast myself to shame someone purposefully in a duel. It is much more delightful when the opponent is the beast thinking he sees his breakfast dance before him.”

Loki smirked along and didn’t answer, only to amuse this audience further with revealing his futile want for triumph. The best he found to do was to retreat from the conversation that had taken an uninteresting turn anyway. The corridor he trod along echoed long with the group’s competitive boasts about fighting various creatures of the realm.

They never passed a chance to delve into stories of their own bravery. With Thor leading the row and the annual newcomers dogging his footsteps like overexcited pups, this kind of witless haphazardry had been growing increasingly popular. Loki would ever-marvel at their thoughtless uniformity. Yes, Thor was captivating, but…

But.

He was also a brainless oaf. He was rash. He lacked tactfulness of true worth. He wasn’t even in proper control of the immense power stocked up within his body. And, on a side note, he was Loki’s brother. Not theirs.

 _The Princes_ was supposed to be uttered with veneration. But the newcomers didn’t seem to know that; hell, not even Thor seemed to know. Ever since the number of champions their age had increased in the palace, Thor was surrounded with followers, attracted by his all-over friendly personality and the feats he performed. Instead of wading in reverent awe, these treated him like their own connate, crawled at his feet for a chance to chat him up or pat his shoulder, with the same merry coarseness as Thor tended to shake his little brother with, mocking the chatter of his bones, as he worded it. But they were both of royal blood; Loki didn’t leave it unavenged if anyone else believed they could handle him the same way, and though it didn’t evoke that subtle form of respect that silly Thor’s actions did, it gradually opened a cautious circle around him as time went on. He relished it as he should have, his well earned position. It only stung when Thor was near to make it all appear laughable.

So that day, ready to collapse the entire system with the swish of an arm, Loki was disinterested in delights such as hunting for Achilles’ heels; or in the dangers of facing a wounded beast alone, for that matter, as he stumbled upon the blood-smeared trail on the ground, somewhere in the orchard.

The sensible decision would have been to notify the hunters; yet the knife lay in his fist with nonchalant diligence to take a life for the damned glory. He would afterwards weave a tale that drowned those brutes’ interest in the mass of bodily fluids spilled.

About the warrior maiden, he only knew that she was barely ever seen lying in the infirmary, even though her suicidal tendencies in battle sent her into thundering collisions more often than not. His theory was, which he tended to sketch up before spying on people, that she pocketed a healing stone or two when she could, and used them on those occasions. Her witless resilience alone was most likely not enough to tackle the initial hardships of near-deadly injuries, but she might have carried the right tools for it. She was highly talented at hiding things inside her clothes, after all, judged from the way she’d been seen summoning knives, bandages, a copper plate, a wooden training sword, a few spiked arrows, a fork; and the list went on.

“Holy mother of gods!” Those were his exact words as he barged into the maiden’s private recovery session behind the Picranut bushes, and the heat of his blood quickly dropping, he spun round to call for help.

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” That was the girl’s yell, a commanding tone rich with determination to transmit her will onto him. “You don’t have to call anyone, you hear me? It’s just a scratch, I’m fixing it up now.”

He was stopped in his track by her assurance that stood in a confusing disagreement with all the crimson around her. He turned back and approached, careful to stay at the right distance in protection of his perfectly shined leather boots. And he stared at her palm raised in a pacifying manner, at the smears and the sickening goo of unknown origin and unspeakable colours dripping from it. Then at her face. She was pale, her eyes huge and endlessly dark, set deeper than he remembered. He could have sworn her forehead was bluish, her cheeks played in a green hue.

“You don’t need help?” he inquired, almost sure he misheard of misunderstood.

“Not at all. You may continue minding your own business, Your Highness, and feel free to forget this ever happened.”

Loki contemplated the suspected mockery in her tone. But he was still somewhat dazed from amazement and from the disturbing sight, so he just hummed in acknowledgement and retraced his steps towards the path.

“Not like you could do anything about it yourself, after all,” he heard her mutter. “At least based on the undeveloped performance you show on the battle field. But whatever would be the reason to hide talent, if you had any?”

Yep, he was making the same mistake as everyone did occasionally: forgetting that it was Sif, the name now a commonly accepted synonym for being more harmful than it seemed when stirred. He turned back towards her, curiosity delaying his retort. “You’re insulting me,” he observed. “Why?”

“Oh, was I?” she gasped lousily while making pained attempts to roll already soaked bandages around her slender torso, with unlearned but determined moves. “I’m so sorry, it was not my intention. Was just talking to myself aloud. Happens when someone is faint from blood loss, you know.”

Blood loss, that was Sif’s speciality, the young sorcerer had been aware of that for a while. She didn’t usually miss a chance to induce it, and it wasn’t something that had ever brought her down. At least not in public, he corrected now.

“I might just notify a healer,” he mumbled, his voice more careful than intended.

And as he had unadmittedly feared, she took it for heavy offence. “Do I look to you like I’m dying?” she snapped through clenched teeth, her irritation fuelled by the blood that wouldn’t stop escaping.

“Well, actually-“

“How can you not tell it when you’re supposed to receive this kind of higher training? Do you really have those powers, or are you just tricking everyone?”

A sensitive spot was hit, Loki’s eyebrow twitched. “Just who do you think you are, speaking to me like that, milady?”

“Whoever I am, I’m way more alive than you look during spars, mind you. What in Heavens do you do all the time?”

“I’ll let you know I’m a sorcerer, which is something way more intricate than those brutes, that’s what I do,” he spat.

“Are you? Then how come you aren’t showing off with it already?”

Loki frowned at the simplistic taunt. Did she really think he would fall for it? His eyes darted back and forth between the blood-smeared earth and her face. “You must realise I’m not obliged to do the lowly task of servants, and especially not in return for discourtesy. In any other cases, I’m usually available for demonstration when asked nicely,” he added for future reference.

She looked at him openly then before he’d have turned to leave, the left side of her chin smeared with drying blood, and her voice unexpectedly mild when she spoke: “Please. Can you help me out?”

She said it as lightly as if they had been chatting about the weather so far. And Loki had been ready for her prideful denial, or some retort, or pathetic plead for his forgiveness, or at least some grudge in her tone, but not the unblushing pliancy of a maiden. It wasn’t common in the world of warriors. Again, she hadn’t lowered herself a wee bit, he was well aware of it. And his feet chose to ignore it.

Wordlessly, as if at a whim, he separated from the path and moved towards the disgusting area. He could as well help her out this once, said his belated reasoning. She had conversed with him for quite a lengthy time, after all. No one had done it in a while besides Mother.

“On your back, awless damsel,” he commanded while he knelt and jerked his sleeves upwards to keep them clean.

“I prefer leaving my clothes on,” she pressed through the pain.

He stared at her dumbfounded. “Why would you undress?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered with sheepish uncertainty. “Healers make you do it.”

That made a quiet snort escape his lips before he could have stopped it, but he finished ridding her stomach of the shreds of clothing. “My level is way different from a healer’s, you better remember that,” he said amidst a thick, pleasant surge of self-importance.

Her company was meagre at respect and intelligence, but it was company nevertheless. Thor was not even slipping into his brother’s room for a selfishly induced midnight chat anymore; he claimed it was because it only used to annoy Loki anyway, but the sorcerer happened to know that Thor was sneaking out with his own new buddies, that’s why he didn’t have time to pester his grouchy little soul. What Thor called ‘ _leaving him in peace_ ’ was actually ‘ _not caring anymore_ ’. And it hurt. Whoever said whatever about the petty nature of adolescents’ pains, this felt real, for the first time in Loki’s life. He’d been robbed. Thor’s warmth used to be only for him and perhaps Mother. And now these outsiders had claimed it like it had always been their share.

This girl wasn’t stealing it, she remained untouched, resistant. She wasn’t the least interested in scrounging up morsels from Thor’s attention. She was an outsider among outsiders, too. She was alone, too. She was rejected, too. That meant she didn’t pose a threat, and consequently, she wasn’t worth hating. So Loki decided to help her out. The only thing he wasn’t wise enough yet to know was that Sif didn’t wail and pity herself in her rejection like he did. But that would only show later. For now, Loki overlooked and was unguarded against the warmth that crept up the nape of his neck as the young lady shamelessly marvelled at the rapid closing of her flesh wound.

-T-T-T-

Sif keeps her ever-resentful face upon her regular visits. Loki never skips the opportunity to marvel at how she seems to have settled into the environment for real. She has switched the lost Asgardian fabrics with earthen cotton and denim, mostly.

“I sincerely hope you aren’t putting up with this attire in battles like some humans I’ve encountered,” he notes on it. “Not only are they far less majestic and representative of one’s nature but they also provide zero protection. Unless imbued with magic, of course.”

“They aren’t,” she responds simply.

“Naturally. Who would choose to imbue such a meek little sleeveless tunic, or those well creased trousers, instead of something more… well, combat-ready?”

So far, he’s never asked about anything connected to her daily occupations, and from that she knows he’s suspecting and wondering about it; about the purpose of her time spent in front of his cell in spite of the grudge she’s holding up. She knows it’s not the smartest play, but she’s never been renowned for her acting skills. How could she appease him when she wants to grab his collar and take away his motivation for wreaking any havoc for life? She has promised to _try_ , though, in exchange for her opportunities to visit. And try she will, if only by answering his questions and refraining from wording the spite his skilled eyes detect easily on her face.

“Where is that oaf anyway?” he asks while sitting down on the shelf designed to face visitors in comfort. Hers is some meek little metal chair kept by the opposite wall while unused. She’s been instructed to sit during their chats, for some _psychological_ reasons.

“Surviving,” she responds. She waits patiently for the repetition of his own phrase to sink in. And once again, Loki figures out aptly how to dance along.

“Be kind and tell me this one thing honestly: is he well?”

Her goodwill found, she suppresses a sigh. “The latest battle was nothing like before; it took its toll on everyone, including him.”

“Has he turned into a cripple?”

“Not really. His soul, perhaps, his beliefs. But he won’t stay like that for long, I assure you.”

He smiles faintly at the silent accusation. They both know that Loki wouldn’t be the first to underestimate his own brother.

“Which land is he in now?” he inquires.

“Not sure. Always a different place. He spent several years in other realms before returning to Earth; out of boredom, he claimed. But he hasn’t settled down. He’s travelling around with a few mortals. He has this new Midgardian girl.”

“Again?” Loki is sincerely dismayed now.

“They can be quite entertaining,” Sif shrugs, although with little conviction. The trickster’s face clearly emits suspicion, too, eagerly waiting for her to reveal the joke, and she understands why.

The notion of him standing up is still unexpected. “Get me out of here,” he demands in a low voice, more serious than he’s ever been. “I’m rescuing him.”

She shakes her head through the remainders of her surprise. “He’s all right, Loki.”

“He’s delirious. Why are you idling here in vain, instead of watching over his foolhardiness?”

“There is no point to it. These people are what he needs now.”

For the first time in forever, she believes to detect a hint of broken trust in his averting eyes, and it almost makes her feel guilty, but she tucks the influence to the back of her mind before it would do any harm.

“Where are the others?” Loki asks, unusually timid. “The Warriors Three?”

“Somewhere on this planet. Paris, Baltimore and Moscow, as I recall.”

“What? Why? Where’s Thor then? What are they doing? Sif, what are you doing?”

She takes a few seconds to chew on the questions, hoping to distinguish the motivation behind them. But she is also aware that it’s a hopeless endeavour with Loki, so in the end she just lets the truth roll off her tongue. “Right now, I’m sitting here doing nothing. Doing these human things.”

“For SHIELD?”

“I don’t plan on staying here,” she apologises, “this isn’t the life for an Asgardian. It has to change. But we need Thor for that.”

“And Asgard? Where are the people?”

“Some live on a piece of land we were given for shelter. But many are scattered all over the planet. That land is too little for us.”

For a moment, they share a bond of common dismay. His frown is disbelieving. “He abandoned them?”

“No. Yes. No, he didn’t. He just needs time to recover. Then I’ll help us gather again and found our new kingdom. I’m sure we’ll have the power to wander out to a better place, if he’s with us. It’s what I’m waiting for. It feels wicked to be so helpless, but Thor needs this time for himself.”

Loki listens partially, the warmaiden can see his other half thinking behind the frown while he sits down slowly. By the time his gaze finds the way back to her face, it seems to know something she might not be aware of.

“He’s coming back?”

“He is,” she presses carefully.

“He said so? Did he say he’ll found a new kingdom?”

Oh, she does remember Thor’s scarred smile and his words, they are easy not to forget. _Asgard is a people, Sif. Not a place._

“No,” she admits quietly, seeking the way around his preparing reasoning more malicious than factual.

As if Loki would see right into her mind, his next note concludes the memory: “Sif, you know him as much as I do. He’s not going to do it.”

“Nonsense.”

“The moment he let the people go, he left this idea behind. If he had wanted a kingdom, he’d have stayed and done his part no matter how tormenting it was.”

She glares at him, anger and desperation fighting for dominance in her chest. _He’s a liar_ , she reminds herself, as if reciting a mantra for stability; _he’s lying. He’s asking to gather intel. He’s cunning. He plots. He aims for the throne._

This is what she’s meant to find out. Her purpose here is to make him say what she is – or ought to be – convinced about. So she probes him: “But then what happens to the people?”

“So they’re alive?”

“They’re alive, waiting.”

Loki inspects her face, and she holds firmly onto her expected conviction because she knows he seeks faltering.

“Are they waiting?” he repeats the question.

“They are. Everyone is awaiting the day he returns for them.”

A wrinkle between his eyebrows is trying to follow the argument. “Where’s Fandral?”

“He’s well off,” she answers lightly, “courting rich women for now and having them finance his living.”

“And Hogun?”

“He founded a school somewhere. For martial arts, as they call it on earth. He lives modestly but has everything he needs, he says.”

“Volstagg?”

She affords a faint smirk, victorious at the recognition. “You’re asking things you already know.”

“He’s a chef,” the sorcerer goes ahead of her answer smiling, seemingly heedless to her challenge, making her mirror the expression unwittingly instead.

“Training now, I think,” she corrects. “I heard he was forced to trim his beard to a shameful extent, otherwise he wouldn’t have been let into the kitchens.”

“Oh, no,” Loki mumbles stroking his own smooth jaw in sympathy.

“He hasn’t sent a single photo since then. They make those with the phones you might know.”

“I do. I’ve witnessed Thor’s interaction with ladies when we came to get Father out of Shady Acres. It never ceases to make me wonder how that oaf has a way with every single planet’s inhabitants.”

“Oh? Jealous of your shared skill, Silvertongue?” she inquires.

He smiles warmly in return.


	2. Chapter 2

-o-O-o-

Once upon a time… A damsel in distress, a prince appearing to set things right for her. Flowing golden hair, a comely white steed, heavy armour to fight in, fair tongue, valour to wield and a kingdom to inherit.

His index finger absently scraped the spine of the old fairy tale book on the shelf before the candle-lit desk he occupied. A forearm supported his chin over the bulky volume of sorcery, his gaze lost in a fog of aimless thoughts, his mind momentarily straying in exhaustion. This didn’t usually happen, he could only hope it was not an early sign of aging while he had barely been called a young man; it had been no longer than a few decades that he had serious ideas about the future; as a witless little being, he used to entertain the thought of becoming the elevated kind of hero like the ones in these books. A Giant one, he had added when the two brothers started growing up and the difference between their size and power balance became significant. (And Thor had been determined to become a Valkyrie: their imbecility competed at their ambitions.)

But that had been a long time ago, and now: the sinister art of mind control. He’d been running into dead ends at the matter, even when he snuck into the forbidden sections of the library. That end was always the Mind Stone: an entity with obscure descriptions and undebated origin; he wasn’t even sure it was a stone at all. Its nature, as he had deciphered during his regular nightly research, was not to be written down, but to be there in the minds of the kings, ready to be wielded right when necessary. Like a spell had lain upon the knowledge, it would present itself only to those meaning to take it. That was the most obscure thing Loki had heard until then. _Take it_ could mean various things; none of which applied to him, apparently, since he hadn’t been provided the epiphany so far. And he didn’t even have the option to ask Mother about it, unless he wished to reveal that he’d been delving into _the forbidden_ , which involved many sections of the dark arts. Mother was generous as a teacher, accepting and honest, but strictness lay over these traits. _All at its own time_ , _Loki._ Only, he had lost his sense of time lately. He felt old, then he felt like an infant, then like a geezer again, and then he was something deceptively similar to himself for a day, but never longer. Once, he angered random people with crude pranks; other times he scorned at meaningless bickers among them. It felt like his mind, perhaps even his body, was making clumsy attempts at setting his age to fit the people’s around him. He would ever test those around to see their stand, their limits, and his own. It involved testing his tongue, his wit; he had spread countless mocking tales about his targets’ weaknesses, and he basked in the public uncertainty about their half-truths.

Thor had grown much different, just like people phrased it, even though they meant other things by that. Thor seemed to mingle into any company, regardless of age, social status or intelligence level; he was treated as an equal by everyone except Father and his gathering of elders; those were a thorn in the older prince’s side, and he never refrained from telling them off for their _old-fangled_ ideas, if prompted. Loki agreed, but he did it much quieter, with a respectful layer over it, as was expectable towards anything ancient. He defined Thor’s open resistance as conceit without hesitation, but the rest of the youth saw it as heroism, rather.

And then Thor’s attitude towards _him_ , it had gotten annoying in its entirety. _Stop flailing your arms in battle, you’re practically offering your vital organs on a silver plate._ As if that hadn’t been the point of the trick: he fought light and nimble, not with the tons of metal that slowed him down, doing exactly what his big brother was trying to protect him from. But reasoning was not the way to approach someone that only saw whatever he pleased. And the sorcerous forces failing Loki at rushed moments certainly pleased him. These occasions were no more frequent than the failures of other challengers, but Loki’s rigid pride still groaned from the resulting short-term mockery. He craved to rise above this witless mass to a painful extent at times; he suspected already that he was meant for a solitary path no one else here trod on.

Now, he couldn’t say he was completely alone; there was a single smart creature here that he was able to make sensible contact with.

She lived in the stables, coloured various shades of the night, ranging from the deepest moonless hour to the break of a blushing dawn. She lacked this world’s crudeness; but at the same time, she was strong and healthy: she fit well into the world of warfare. She was proud and capricious: it fit Loki’s nature. Unlike others coming into contact with her, he treated her deviance with ease, he didn’t find it the least discouraging. When he rode out, their contact induced a subtle shell around them that dulled outer and inner noises, regardless of how many were around and how much of their attention was on Loki. His dire thirst for recognition quieted down for these hours.

That would be noticed among the young folks that usually kept together. “Call me a fool, but His Royal Highness is… how do I put it… _less offensive_ while we’re on a journey, is that not so?”

“You may see it just right, my friend,” Thor would respond to such notes lightly. “See, Loki has been this reverent about horses since our infancy. Perhaps some should be kept near at all times to lead forth when he’s on his newest prank.”

And truly enough, the young sorcerer would or wouldn’t hear the semi-concealed laughter in the loosened atmosphere of the travel. Fortune’s blessing only prevented Thor from realising that even among these majestic beasts, Grima – it’s what she was called – was exceptional; queen of everything crowned multiple times by Loki’s verbal pamper; solely in private whispers, of course, these brutes didn’t have a distinct idea about platonic intimacy.

There was a lurking wish at the depth of his soul that this was possible with some fellow Aesir; he did long to find his own kin. But he wouldn’t have exchanged Grima for it. His appreciation was far from doting: she had earned it with her supreme servitude, though generally unrecognised.

Loki’s current private plot led the army into a checkmate situation; he had wished to separate from the troop unnoticed and seek out one of the enemy leaders for a secret pact that would benefit him first hand, Asgard second. The attempt failed, his escape back to his own side by a hair’s length, a lesson learned about people’s unseen preference for rectitude.

They could still stay on horseback while their troops were cornered at the base of the nature-carved, metal-infused stone wall by the acidic sea. A single glance at the sky from Odin’s steel-coloured eyes provided Loki with the assurance that backup was now gathering before the gatekeeper’s post, so he could send them down as a devastating flood. It was a race against the enemy’s patience on the wane.

While Thor was busy bellowing into Odin’s reasoning with the foreign king, it was nonchalant routine according to which Loki acted, tangling himself into reins and decorative tufts during his neurotic fiddling and irate huffs, drawing increasingly annoyed glances towards himself now and then from both parties. Before Odin would have yelled his known play into silence, Grima responded to his pretended clumsiness with disobedience as sure as clockwork, standing on her rear legs and staying like that.

“What in the nine realms ails you, you fidgety, disrespectful beast?” Loki hissed over the threatening grunts of the nearby soldiers, and he held onto the mare’s neck for dear life. “Have you no mind for the calm of these fierce warriors?”

“Loki, this is no time to play,” Thor barked at him, his frown a laughable replica of the Allfather’s.

“You don’t need to tell me,” his brother sputtered. “Whosoever has bred and trained this beast, they shall pay with their neck if I make it home. And you too, you preposterous animal! You’ll be on my plate, marinated and roast!”

“What is the meaning of this foolery?” the enemy king inquired, drawing his blade.

“It is but a clumsy mistake,” Odin responded dryly. “Have patience, it's over in a second.”

“Yes, Father, as you command,” blundered the younger prince clinging on the silently performing mare.

“It is your son I first slay from your masses, eh?” the king derived as he approached the duo under the weight of the steely gaze. “The second in line, I presume from his lack of uphold?”

“Pray, be careful,” Loki warned the approaching man. “She reacts to the sight of glistening weapons in incalculable ways.”

“You are shaming us at the wrongest time, brother!” Thor snapped, the only one who had any response to the well known, generally undesired play. Loki sneered back at him uneasily, and Grima answered a single accidental hip motion with hopping onto four legs, but she didn’t stop there: as if faltering in health, she lay down onto her side right with the seemingly flustered sorcerer on her back.

“Merciful heavens, you might just have given her a heart attack!” he wailed up at the king that towered over him furious about the uncanny scene, his sword ready to strike. “Look, there goes her soul!”

The king didn’t, but some soldiers turned their gazes onto the sky where Loki’s finger pointed, and their frightened yells interrupted the sorcerer’s murder at the last moment.

Even after the victory, he merely got a headwash from Father, _you needn’t have offered your own fatuous head for nothing_ , but Loki took it with a knowing smirk in the corner of his lips: such façade and (with his additional fuss) the ruckus it awoke in the surroundings could more than once be used for turning the tide. Whether it lead to success or additional troubles, it was usually so well timed that even Loki, with his general self-satisfaction, tended to suspect that their synchrony was purposeful on the mare's side as well.

It might have served as an explanation that she wasn’t an inside royal breed, she was adopted – spoils of war from a place where she had been maltreated. That Loki was willing to look over this part was an extraordinary privilege; after all, grandeur was the air he breathed. As royalty, he had been able to claim the beast without debate upon second-third sight, based on her colour at first (his two hundredth year had found him in a burning desire to be the stark opposite of his golden brother). Grima’s soul was scarred for good, thus the caprice. And despite all her incurable patterns of misbehaviour and her inability to stand in line with the other trained beasts, Loki had grown attached to her. To scolding or physical punishment, she always reacted by getting motionless and staring at whoever sought her better judgement, as if baffled by a completely new situation; after the first few times, it became obvious she was feigning ignorance to weaken or divert the anger. Her playful indifference towards such conditioning suggested she knew somehow that Loki would not swap her out for a stallion as golden as Thor’s, as fearsome as Odin’s, or as robust as Sif’s.

Why the maiden had snatched the second largest animal for herself (the largest one was held up for the largest warrior), was clear to Loki. It was what he had given up for Grima: to counter her own size and the power balance coming with it. Because the years had passed meanwhile, and with it grew the familiar figures lankier, wider, hairier, smellier. Sif did neither of those, her body did something completely different.

She was improving steadily at combat, although the fervour with which she threw herself in the way of blades, maces, arrows or various offensive body parts, just to see her own momentary plan through, remained a spectacle that jerked Loki’s look to itself each time he wasn’t watching his gestures.

He would not find sense in those foolhardy yet purposeful moves, in the profuse amount of energy directed where an urge to escape was supposed to take over. While nothing but shapeless fumbling in the first years, it had gone through a change since then: the coarse beastliness was fading from her moves, her techniques became more refined and even more efficient as she learned. It affected her posture, her most common movements. Due to the way her body was growing, but also from her professional stance and stabilising confidence, she looked far less starved than at her first appearance. The straight opposite of Loki, who seemed to grow more bones than skin and definitely fell behind at flesh. But not quite similar to Thor either, whose splendid form made all his fights radiate enjoyment, and bore an equal number of new begrudgers and admirers each year. Sif’s learned moves were also powerful, but they told about determination, rather than fun. Then again, it would have been a peculiar sight if she had rejoiced in her own blood pouring out after the suicidal blows she seemed to hold onto like some treasured quality.

Thus, Loki usually reeled lightly into the shadow of another exit when all attention was elsewhere, walking a path that would cross hers shortly: a habit that had formed unnoticed, in which Loki – strictly without any witnesses, on an unvoiced but mutual agreement – healed her injuries. He named his choice pity, predicting her ambition here to be short-lived and to end in miserable failure. Whenever his marvellous sense for subtle occurrences detected her sneaking away from the field, he already had a calculation on the rate of her injury, based on antecedents. Learned valour made it inevitable for him to help her out when her wounds promised a longer recovery time: she seemed keener on dying hunched up in a dim storage room than pleasuring the public with a hint of weakness. It would have made her lose the respect she was laboriously building up bit by bit, as Loki had observed.

He blamed it on his more and more scarcely showing sympathetic side; but he noted her having a tough time with these fools, just like himself, and that also appealed to young Loki in a way, even tough he still didn’t deem her the brightest or the fairest, not even the most influential in the palace. Not like she ever heeded these herself; she delved into the bickering conversations with anyone that started them like she knew no other choice.

He felt benevolent with a slighter being during their private encounters. He had missed this feeling since his big, gushing brother’s attention was occupied all day, and since Loki also found it increasingly difficult to put up with the multiplied _Thors_ – synonym for rash, brawny dimwits – pouring into their lives. Practically nothing but harsh displays of brute dominance was a viable tool to gain their recognition. He had to admit, most of his would-be soldiers he was presently forced to coexist with excelled at physical combat as much as he excelled at sorcery. And excellence wielded without sufficient wits was a source of annoyance for the observer. Their blind-deaf fervour was definitely not in Loki’s nature, he believed, and if that wasn’t enough, they continued forgetting their place. Contrary to the unconditional applause of servants, this folk didn’t need his magical displays. What he was learning day by day didn’t exist for them. On the training field, they won by sheer strength and speed and the thickness of their skulls, while he now used his wit to evade, trick, sneak up from behind, smartly counterbalancing his own weaknesses with spells; these moves found an ungrateful reception in the newly accumulated mob, labelled as cheating. He comforted himself: it was because no one here could defend against them, and it grazed their pride. He may have been the rumoured _weeny little imp_ for now, but that didn’t mean he was obliged to let himself up to their leisure.

Due to some wicked miracle, he still wasn’t the champion of the training hours. He could impress, blind, goad and intimidate as he liked, he still kept losing against the most significant opponents. But even then, or especially then, the sorcerer’s fight was theatrical: mostly uninterested in these expectably hopeless brawls themselves, he played for the audience usually gathering under nearby windows and arcades. He enjoyed the burst of giggles when he made another trainee’s victory fumbled and unglorious. It was almost as rewarding as enraging it was to see Thor earn the dreamy cheering with merely his effortless presence on the field. It reminded of the distance that had stolen between them: gazing at Thor’s hilariously broad back while the blond responded to the applause at each of his triumphs. Loki had grown to love ruining people’s victory cheer with _accidental_ glitches in his skills.

Only when training alone with Thor did he refrain from using trickery, unless he forgot it, or pretended to. Lately, all other means felt like pointless complications for mere gameplay.

“Mend your methods, Loki, otherwise you’ll never improve,” was Thor’s most common parental pretence, supported by his ultimate frown of justliness. “You’ve already got a long way to go before you catch up to our soldiers.”

“I can’t!” Loki would snap back, loathing the assumed condescension in that look. They used to be, they should have been equals. “I can’t, all right? It just doesn’t work, no matter what I do, so stop meddling in it!”

“There is no _can’t_ for an Asgardian, brother! You may be king one day, but for that, you have to give the people what they seek!”

And Loki would snarl in anger for not being like an Asgardian should be, and he would do those extra fifty rounds that day. But only that day. Drilling was way too far from his preferences.

-T-T-T-

He’s floating inches above the golden throne. Legs crossed, hands resting on his knees, palms facing up, two fingers touching. In his most preferred leather vest above a venom green cotton shirt. The light of unknown source around him is majestic.

“What are you doing?” Sif inquires timidly while sitting down.

“Entertaining. Myself, you, perhaps,” comes the answer.

“You’re mocking humans,” she observes.

“I’d have phrased it as putting myself in their shoes; doesn’t that sound more appealing? You seem to be developing an affection to them. This is a form some believe they can achieve.”

“They can’t float. And neither can you.”

“I need to release some seidr occasionally. I’m afraid it might overflow or seal itself completely.”

“And then you’ll be no different from those mortals with superhuman strength.”

As if on cue, his illusionary self plops down onto the seat, feet ending up on the ground. His expression tells her she just managed to ruin his day.

“Does being a mortal go with dressing up as a log?” he inquires in moderate fright, perhaps to return the gesture.

To show that the insult is ineffective, she doesn’t follow his gaze that runs over her knee-length tawny cardigan patterned with minuscule geometric shapes, thrown over her dark shirt: she had to dress rapidly due to a phone call she had promised to obey, many hours ago. But this is not for him to know.

“You have no idea what I’ve heard about your tight pants and men’s fertility,” she replies instead as diversion.

The lack of an answer should mean her mock reasoning won the dispute, but it feels rather like the sorcerer refuses to take part in this conversation. “Where is my brother now?” he asks as a whimsical topic change.

“In a land named Canada.” She is relieved enough to generously add the latest news: “He talked to a bear, and his friends were overwhelmed by surprise. They were so noisy he had to explain that they meant no harm.”

“ _Friends_ …” Loki huffs quietly.

“He’s having a good time. He deserves it.”

His voice remains quiet, his words scarce, his questions small and abundant during the rest of the conversation. Once again, Sif unwittingly detects what she believes to see in him every now and then: the boy yet to learn about his rightful share in the world. A boy nursing his first great sorrow over an everyday matter. She wonders if that boy has grown any since back then, or if he’s been too busy with other concerns. His skill at guiding the conversation away, and at seeking out her soft spots without even caring to hide the attempts well is certainly unchanged. She suspects that the chance of him revealing anything today is gone. During the idle chatter, he inquires why she’s residing in this area, at last, and she’s shamefully glad about the opportunity to raise her excuses.

“I intended to pass the time in New Asgard, so I’d stand at Thor’s service any time he decides to return,” she explains. “Then this one-eyed human sought me out.” She claims the latter in a tone flat, faintly embarrassed.

His smirk prepares a question asked more out of favour than to lull his own curiosity. “What’s the task you arrived here with?”

Her meaningful silence is to indicate she isn’t going to betray the organisation’s secrecy. “He convinced me by letting me know of your presence,” she shares instead.

“Look at you, a swan obeying lice for some spectacle,” Loki notes quietly.

That stings and she can’t hide it – not from one who knows that insulting someone else in her favour riles her up sooner than insulting her own person – but she holds back at the last breath; it clearly disappoints Loki a bit. His tone is apologetic as he adds: “It _is_ quite pitiful that a gathering of mortals are able to make us work against each other. And yet, you’re the only one who cares to take a look at me at all. I’m grateful for that.”

She smirks at his lousy try to imitate this kind of poise, but her gesture is purposeful scorn, not entirely covering up the sadness that creeps into her heart. And she’ll keep watching him play along with the game Director Fury has started. She is sure that Loki's goal and hers are shared: seeing him free from this loathsome box; only their conditions differ. His aim is to shake off these humans' control over him entirely, possibly through Sif herself. And would she fall for the nostalgic pull of her heart in the end?

-o-O-o-

Loki, son of Something, trod curiously on the foreign planet. He sometimes found himself here and took a stroll among the moderately sensible inhabitants while seeking the way out to Anywhere Else. They were a rigid folk, he’d figured out a while ago that they weren’t susceptible either to structured teaching or playful conditioning. With shaping this world to his own benefit out of the picture, he remained a stoic observer.

This lasting sensation mostly started at a father-sons meeting, the kind that went with listening to an hour’s mutual bellowing over his head. He’d been but a fledgling when he had last tried condescending to bless the two with his impeccable solutions to the matters discussed; he had figured out since then that it was never really about attacking the defiant border nations or whether to send bread or weapons to the oppressed; so he could but lean back and wait for the end of his wasted time. Wasted, because it rarely influenced him in the desired way. But at least it wasn’t Hel either: even when the scold involved him, it was never more severe than Thor’s, who was often tricked into his sin, due to Loki’s strife to make him appear in a bad light, and to worsen his delight in his undiminishing popularity. (It never really worked out.) There was still something painfully, aggravatingly boring at these visitations; perhaps it was that he never took anything away from it, exactly because it didn’t seem like he was expected to do better. The King never praised either of them, but he often clashed with his elder son. Not with Loki, the differences between them were solved by Father’s silence about the matter after a few turns. Loki’s cunning divertive approaches to convince him didn’t work on the aged man’s fort of indifference. Loki could storm and rage as he liked – once he was out of the throne room. Since nothing else seemed to help the nagging gloom.

When he received the umpteenth blow on his cheekbone, fingers digging into his shoulder to prevent evasion, he pressed laughter through the gush of blood trickling down his throat. “Believe me, I’d be infinitely sorry by now if you wouldn’t be an absolute delight to everyone here,” he said with an apologetic look upwards, a bit sagged under the weight of the grasp. The end of his sentence drowned in the next punch.

“Get it off,” growled the mountain often belittled with the label _warrior_ amidst the cheery incitement of the onlookers. The inhabitants’ pleasure was double: the vile trickster’s toil, and the coarse half giant’s head glowing pink from his magically coloured beard and mane, enhanced by the flush of shame on his cheek.

“Why, I could as well grace you with my help, but you’re not giving me a chan-“

The next – and, judged from the hoarse battle cry, final – blow met an obstacle in another bulky figure’s leather-clad forearm, while the free hand grabbed Loki by the collar and distanced him from the attacker.

“What did you do again?” the newcomer inquired before any other greeting would have taken place.

He was the being titled _brother_ , sometimes vile, sometimes benevolent, sometimes a mindless blob. Sometimes warm and addictive, sometimes suffocating, sometimes overwhelming. Occasionally, showing hints of protective intent remaining from his infant period.

“He just paved his way to his doom,” the mountain explained.

“Shut up, Volstagg.” The brother pushed back the renewed advance without averting his glare from Loki.

“It isn’t my fault, I had no choice!” Loki snapped while his fingertips wiped some of the blood off his lips with unfitting elegance. He always started with a simple white lie like this, and if the audience wasn’t conveniently gullible, he raised the level gradually until the desired result occurred.

As expected, the current subject remained untouched for now. “Stop this pointless frolic and change him back,” he commanded.

“But brother, look, he’s more popular than he’s ever been,” the sorcerer pleaded, pointing out the general joviality around them: a mixture of servants, trainees and mightier palace dwellers. “I’m just doing what you keep telling me to: giving the people what they seek.”

“Do it, Loki, or I’ll pound you to the ground myself!”

“All right, fine,” he swept the hand off and straightened his collar. “But, you see, surprising as it is, even my abilities aren’t limitless. Undoing this… _enchantment_ is bound to certain conditions.”

“Well, provide them quickly then,” the brother glared at him impatiently.

“I’ll need his assistance,” Loki glanced reluctantly at the largest man, his following explanation eager to get ahead of retorts. “First of all, he needs to be rid of his little merfolk charm: ivory repels the counter-spell, and-“

“My what?”

“You know, that pretty little figurine pierced into your-“

“Merfolk?” the brother frowned along with the giggling crowd. “Why would you-“

“I have no such thing!” the mountain bellowed, by now deep red in the face amidst the reawakened giggles all around.

“Y-you don’t?” Loki stuttered confused. “Then what in Heavens smells so cretinous in you?”

Another assault was held back, and the brother had a hard time pacifying the mountain. “Don’t knock him unconscious,” he begged. “You have to go with it for now if you want your looks back. He got you this time.”

“I’ll show you who’s cretinous, you twat!” the mountain yelled over the elder prince’s shoulder regardless. “How do you know about it anyway? What despicable means do you possess? Tell me, or I’ll tear you to snitches at this instant, and I’ll cook your bits and pieces into a pulp and feed it to my horse!”

“Well, that’s rude,” Loki mumbled.

“True enough. The poor beast might just lose its appetite for good. So out with it, how do you know?”

“I have eyes for such things,” he shrugged. “Same way you have the stomach for a whole bulltard.”

“Eyes, my arse! You were spying on me while I-“

The mountain fell silent mid-sentence, even though the equally speechless crowd, the brother included, was eager to hear the rest. Loki would have loved to let them force it out, but dizziness was weighing on him, so he spoke up firmly.

“As I was saying, no ivory. You’ll burn into a crisp either way, so why not choose what you can stand up from, eventually?”

He waited in patience until the man finally moved.

“It is not pierced into anything,” barked the mountain sometimes titled _warrior_ , and grudgingly dug into his beard – or perhaps under his shirt that was covered by the rampant pink facial hair.

His dark eyes and muttering lips promising the trickster’s torturous demise, he placed the pale figurine on the ground with the utmost care.

“It’s enchanted to yield stamina,” he explained fiercely while shoving away the heads that leaned in for a closer look.

“Sure it is,” Loki mumbled under a quiet snort, and he continued loudly fast enough before a retort could have been made. “And secondly… Norns, how do I put this? Completely _not_ my fault, given your grand heights from intellectual to physical aspects, the counter-spell cannot touch you, unless you’re in a kneeling position and dimming the brilliance of your mind; reciting the nursery song _Gay little starcone at the bay_ shall do the trick.”

The exploding laughter of the masses was absolutely worth the unexpected and thus unhindered blow in the middle of his smug grin. He would learn shortly afterwards how to tap out the border between triggering painful retaliation like this and simply causing scorching annoyance; mostly thanks to this easily angerable hairy one that usually harboured vengeful thirst for the blood of Loki, occasional bitterer of his life.

The brother was friends with him; normally, these two formed one big, bulky cluster of fumbling merriness, sweeping away any obstacles unnoticed with their intention to love the world in this crude way. Their frivolous conversations, patterned with roars of laughter, echoed across the entire hall during feasts, entertained their surroundings on the training grounds, scared away lesser beasts while Asgard's army crossed a forest on visits to other realms.

Loki sometimes mused what it would be like to be a creature of this planet, touching with them now and then and sharing those superfluous activities they killed time with among themselves. He had faint memories of some, which involved himself skipping in the wake of the brother like a moppet, in some misty age infused with unrecognised but pleasant solitude.

“Healing stones, please,” he grunted upon his entry to a healing chamber and leaned against the wall to hide his dizziness.

“Gracious Norns, Your Highness, I’ll bring them forth at once,” the resident assistant gasped and hurried to a drawer in the wall. “What has occurred that made you like this?”

“The intricate folds on the spotless white sheet of justice,” Loki mumbled with eyes closing in a desire to rest.

The maiden was visibly baffled by the note, but he hadn’t even aimed to make sensible conversation with her. As she offered the small bowl of stones with a mild bow, she lowered her voice: “Your Highness, am I to inform the Queen about the fall of your sorcerous powers?”

“No need,” he said irately while claiming three of the precious gems. “I’m just low on energy. Stay quiet about it.”

He was drained indeed: the experiment with this hair colour transformation showed the limit of his powers clearer than ever. It never ceased to annoy him how short life was: he was forced to choose between different points of focus, like extending his capacity, strengthening his existing spells or widening his repertoire with further ones less mastered.

In his chambers, he leaned back in an armchair and crushed a stone over his aching nose, hissing quietly as he rubbed the powder in with the tip of his fingers to aid its work. The other two gems would remain untouched in a secret pocket inside his sleeve until his next private encounter with Sif.

Not like he needed them, of course, he was more than capable of closing pierced flesh or mending a splintered bone; but they could be of use when he was not around. These stones he occasionally snatched away for her were but a small present in his momentary mood. He knew she needed them, and he remembered her when an opportunity arose, that was all, nothing out-of-ordinary. That he never presented them openly but snuck them into her pockets instead while mending her torn body was not cowardice, just a display of his rank: not giving her the option to refuse with a friendly smile and remind him that she was perfectly capable without his efforts. He was above futile debates like this; gifting the stones unasked was nothing but him being relentless in his royal will.

-T-T-T –

He’s sporting a buttery white shirt, long-sleeved, its top three buttons open, and well creased trousers on long-stretching, crossed legs along the sun lounger. The newspaper he’s mindlessly leafing through holds a shadow against the illusionary scorch of the sun. Sif believes to understand – which is a dangerous belief with Loki, she’s also aware of this – that his playful changes of appearance, always a replica of some earthen phenomenon, are a wall against being seen. A visible wall that guides attention away from the invisible one, the one hiding the secrets she’s meant to dig up, for Midgard, for good relations between humans and Asgard’s disheartened people, and, at times she strays towards hoping (Old habits don’t die, do they?), for Loki.

Her repeated attempts at persuading him to cooperate are starting to deject her. Their conversations keep straying towards other matters. She’s only still allowed to be here because Fury doesn’t heed the series of failures she hates admitting. _Just talk to him_ , the director said last time, _you’re from the same lofty country, you surely have plenty to talk about. Take your time, Lady Sif. And take his. Both you and I know he determines the pace, but that doesn’t bother us the least, now, does it?_

She happens to know what he meant. The required action itself isn’t quite abhorring, it’s always uplifting to spend time with someone familiar.

Not like she hasn’t made any friends here; this society is full of warrior maidens, and the atmosphere is so _non-misogynistic_ that she’s almost bored from the lack of challenge. But she has also grown aware of how different she is. Values are different here. These women, even while developing their combat abilities with hard work, hold preening for a primary factor in passing their free time. And she holds maintaining her skills for a priority. On a mission, humans stick to the plan no matter what happens around them. It’s the key to a successful mission and a minimal number of victims, they believe. She, on the other hand, has something different drilled into her: the valour of helping out whomever she can. These are the two main areas of confrontation in her life. When she’s firmly asked to accompany Agent Hill on what they call a shopping spree, or when she’s astonishingly reprimanded by mortal superiors for leaving her appointed route on the field to rescue a comrade, she truly feels like an alien stranded.

So Loki the cunning, foolish, self-destructive trickster, who hasn’t been on the same side as her for an aeon, who sees without asking a bothersome amount of questions about her motives, he _is_ an old friend. It takes about ten minutes for the glass wall to become unnoticed.

“Human prison is much too kind to intimidate me,” he lets her know at one point, leaving his feigned ignorance behind as casually as a discarded veil. “It’s their fault, not yours, that we’re not getting anywhere.”

“You’re forgetting to take someone into account,” she notes suggestively, earning a sly smile in return, but no answer.

Once again, instead, his next question is a sudden turn in the conversation. “Sif, are the people waiting?”

For a second, she doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Then she chooses to say what she believes she should feel, ignoring the doubt humming quietly inside. “It never leaves your mind, does it? You don’t believe Asgard can flourish again? Or do you simply not want it to happen, out of envy or revenge? Because you’re not king?”

With the paper laid in his lap, he allows a sad smirk, and she reminds herself once again that every breath of his bears intention. “It’s been a while,” he notes.

A while for what? Since someone threw it into his face? Since he got close to ruling anything? Since a clash with Sif herself? She can’t quite figure it out. If the world worked the right way, he could as well be thinking of obtaining the crown like it’s his rightful heirloom, about proving his worth by power. But he doesn’t say any of it, leaving her in doubt. He traces back instead: “The people aren’t waiting, are they? They’re finding their place in Midgard, each on their own.”

“I know,” she admits. “They’re resigned in being nothing. But we won’t leave them like that. Thor surely knows it, too. It’s only a matter of time.”

“You’re growing weary.”

“I’m not. I’ll never give up hope, Loki.”

"Not that." He’s studying her face through the wall. Her foolish mind quickly recalls what she’s wearing: a lengthy knitted sweater, with a loose turtleneck – temperatures in the outside world are sinking. Another temporary winter approaches the land, with its darkness that tends to dishearten creatures of the sun. "Your body,” he says interrupting her self check. “You’re exhausting yourself. How much of your powers do you let them exploit?

Oh.

Her gaze drops to avoid countering the lightness in her chosen tone. “It’s not the jobs. Someone got badly injured a while ago because of me, and I’ve been… bothered, that’s all.”

“You do several jobs for these worms? They should reward you with a lifetime’s worth for just one favour.”

“What I choose to do is none of your concern,” she reminds him. “It wouldn’t be even if you were king of the entire Universe.”

“At least my brother shall appreciate that, this rate of your lenience towards humans.”

“He shall,” she agrees bluntly.

And as if noting the seriousness of her resentment, he quickly remedies his words: “You were looking the other way while that one got hurt, just as the instructions said,” he guesses.

“Not only looking,” she admits. She stands up, glad that the visitation hour is approaching its end and she can escape the expectable intrusion into her soul through the gap found. “I was sipping champagne and not lifting a finger.”

His chuckle shows approval. He puts his feet on the ground to face her in his sitting. “Tell me more before you go.”

“I was fulfilling an order,” she clarifies briefly, not intending to go into details for his pleasure.

“Oh? Do get me a job here, Sif. I love champagne,” Loki calls after her before she could leave.

“Surprise, surprise.” Her reaction turns out rather nonchalant.

“I mean it. I’m very good at champagne. You know I make an exemplary aristocrat. I know everything about all high class etiquettes of the nine realms.” His subtle excitement can be told in his movements as he stands by the barrier.

“You mean most of them,” she corrects, with an eyebrow arched in tease.

“I mean all of them,” he nods for emphasis.

“I’d gladly take up that challenge but we haven’t got time left for pettiness.”

“Someone here must have it. Tell them I’m ready for any human pettiness they have to offer.”

She contemplates his urging face for a moment. “You’re so bored,” she voices her sympathetic observation.

He nods half-heartedly, the bite on his lips an advocate of his hopeless situation.

“I’m still waiting to hear your story,” she suggests.

An impish smirk accompanies the notion as his hands slide into his pockets. “Eat apples,” he says. “Bananas. Grapes, oranges. Carry a bunch of cashews, almond, walnuts for a snack, or get the foods they make from them. They can keep you high on energy between these measly humane burgers.”

She studies him like he had just arrived from space. “That’s… not quite what I was talking about.”

“Well, it does have a story behind it.”

“Is there?”

Loki takes a deep breath. “I get to read,” he informs her. The illusionary plastic chair is tossed aside when an unnoticed magic barrier lifts like a blanket, revealing a large pile of books. The sorcerer’s expression is that of a martyr while his fingers run through them, patting one titled _Fruits and Nuts for a Fulfilling Diet_.

“Well, that’s news indeed,” she responds with arched eyebrows.

“It’s about all I have access to. They certainly don’t aid me on my ways of evil.”

She makes a half-hearted effort to suppress her amused smile before she’s let out through the secured gate, not yet certain if she’ll get the hint or wait for some more pathetic begging.

-o-O-o-

It was a costly victory; the field near Nornheim was covered in corpses, like a decaying carpet, ragged toys twisted and torn apart by an unexpected attack wave of hellish monsters. The cost of overlooking the preparations of evil forces underground. The youngest warriors buried dismay deep down, older ones stared quiet and broken into thin air: their worthiness long proven, they had no need to hide being sensible creatures.

Loki strode nearby with shattered plans beyond his tense jaw. Having just slain the last of the sneakily assaulting monster horde, there was no one left to tell about his treachery, his failure would burn him alone for the upcoming days. It was satisfactory in a way; after all, he knew well what would befall on one putting the entire land at stake just to see his brother fail. Well, it wouldn’t only have been himself, the entire Asgard would have had the chance to behold Thor foolishly taking on an entire army of Hel-born creatures on his own – had someone not heard the wild clatter of Thor’s armour and blades as they collided recklessly with scales, claws, teeth. But the Norns have always preferred the golden brother: despite Loki’s precaution to provide the court with entertainment for the time, the army had arrived to the once secret entrance before Thor would have given up his immaculate pride (That or his life first?) in protection of the city.

How he had ended up battling here alone, and how the magically sealed entrance had become seen to inappropriate eyes in the first place had not been discussed for now, so Loki had time to work on that faint afterthought and to make up his preferred version of the tale. And, like always, he would be ready with a mesmerising excuse by the time Odin would summon his two sons for blame sharing.

Unworried, then, he walked the upturned battle ground. A figure just placed here from another timeline: his posture was straight, his demeanour appearing spotless even with the smudges and tearings in his clothes. Unlike his brother who was presently carrying three injured towards the freshly set up tents, the sorcerer went alone along the row of gathered warhorses as casually as if he had been out on a Sunday stroll. His steps were even more forcibly natural because he sensed a look watching from the crowd a dozen feet away, noticing his private occupation: quick, airy touches on each steed and mare. It was nothing gushing, but he knew the purposelessness was unignorable in it. The responding snorts and attempts to sniff his hair as he passed by betrayed his general uphold and showed that he wasn’t unfamiliar to the animals. Though it sold him out to the peering eyes, he found it strangely satisfying; as if the audience had added to the soothe that grew in him bit by bit with every animal in the row named, alive and unharmed.

He thought his attention to be entirely on the beasts, but he still knew her approach before her steps were heard.

“How did this noble herd earn your attention?” There was a hollow crack along the tune of her voice, resembling the distant stares of the recovering soldiers.

“It’s for the breeding,” he answered briefly (a white lie to protect the sacred), his activity undisturbed.

“Breeding?”

“To see who’ll do best for the next breed,” he explained the obvious (subtle repetition to keep away from the protected ground).

Apparently only half-convinced, Sif eyed the movement of his hand while walking along him a few feet away. Loki suspected her thoughts and continued after a while: “I’m taking into account who’s been lost. So I know the options. The qualities to inherit.” (Third time, or maybe fourth? The power of a lie started losing strength at this point.)

“How come it isn’t done by servants?”

“I prefer choosing my own war horse.” He looked at her as they approached the end of the row. “Wouldn’t you trust it easier that way?”

Before she had responded, they arrived to the last mare, Loki’s, who was tugging on her ropes in an attempt to tear them away, or possibly to take the entire metallic structure and the other beasts along: Loki could see the terror of the vicious monsters still hovering before her twitching pupils. Her muscles crackled from the effort to tug herself free. She reeled away from the prince’s touch, but he disregarded her wish to be left ungroomed, though silently, as no soothing words or tone felt fitting for the assumed horrors lived through. All he did was ignore the unsettling amount of resistance against his intrusion.

“They say you didn’t have any control over this one’s birth. Where’s she from?” inquired the lady (without major injuries) in the dented armour.

“Swartalfheim. But by her looks, she might have been stolen from our land before that.”

“She doesn’t seem to be the most preferable breed. Quite a self-willed one. She enjoys a show any time.”

At her carefully worded note, his look examined her entire form in a second before he could have stopped the instinctive gesture. “Any time, you say?” he chose to ask back as he took hold of his tongue before slipping into defence unnecessarily.

His fiddling with the tense rein around the groaning metal post forced Grima to raise her head so he could stand under her chin and get better access to the hurriedly tied knot. He sensed the mare’s movements halt behind him in surprise, with her nose letting out quiet puffs of air above him.

“She used to be handled by monsters,” he added: a superfluous try to appease the maiden against his horse.

“Why did you take her?” she wanted to know.

His momentary silence was intended rather nonchalant than brooding. “I’m the dark horse type,” he pointed out then. And he turned to study her unwilled, lopsided smile. “Is that mockery I discern?”

“Norns forbid; I think it suits you. My amusement is over your upcoming partial baldness.”

Finally noting the much obvious effort of the beast to consume his hair, Loki frowned and shooed the intrusive mouth away with the back of a hand before answering: “It is likely, unless you happen to carry a juicy carrot with you.”

“I’m afraid you’re out of luck, my Prince.”

His frown and disapproving hum was playful resentment against her carelessness while he produced a large apple into his hand from thin air and shoved it up Grima’s mouth without looking.

The expected marvel of the lady didn’t happen; not only did she ignore being the first audience of a recently obtained ability, she even suppressed her much understandable curiosity about where he got the apple from (an interdimensional pocket), what else he had stocked up there (nothing really useful for now), what was the greatest mass he could produce this way (a battle hammer and training up), and so forth. Then again, as a touch of heat around his ears reminded him, he shouldn’t have expected a reaction from her, the one that had proven to be the hardest to sway in her focus by anyone.

Not the first time, however: it was usually to his utter surprise when public conversations about her, with her, would reveal things he hadn’t known or hadn’t expected her to disclose to anyone at all. Like that she’d been practicing knife throwing privately, or that she had made a deal with Brokk, whose coarse comments offended her most frequently on the battle field, that he would forge her a sword of her wishes. Something Loki, as a random example, could have arranged by the flick of his little finger. He grasped it with comparatively great swiftness that she _shared_ with these people even amidst the constant bickers, while being rivals competing for various ways of recognition. Not that it mattered, but it baffled him nevertheless.

And then, the land-wide trend had reached her at last: she had fallen into a crush for Thor. Some could see, others couldn’t, the rest refrained from expressing a stand in fear of offending the highly defensive maiden. She decidedly behaved like there was nothing, only that misplaced blush shone through her rarely smiling face, and she would drop objects now and then, while the older prince was around. But she never afforded a blink of recognition unless formalities demanded. Hell, she was way more surly than Loki, and she still awoke interest in people. Men, that is. That was undoubtedly the keyword here. Several of those brutes couldn’t have denied straightaway seeking her attention with various but equally doltish means.

“Oops,” Loki mumbled at this point, as he let the rein slide through his fingers. Grima instantly perceived the freshly gained freedom: she took a two-legged turnaround and rocketed away along the edge of the forest.

He stared after the animal, feeling the lady’s eyes on his jawline; his attention was on the handful of soldiers as they jogged after the mare with clattering fervour. The scene was lousily staged and already starting to bore him, not involving public interest, later scolding, or any kind of reaction at all.

“Behold that useless crowd,” he sighed. They walked towards the other side of the field, where the mare nimbly eluded the capturing attempts, now openly playing with the increasingly provoked Aesir. Loki’s inviting clicks of the tongue went unheeded as well; Grima was suddenly blind to his calling hand, the approaching pair happened to be behind her all the time while she galloped along the other men.

“It looks like you’re not one in favour right now either,” Sif said with a hint of tease in place of the previous hollow. Her voice had filled up with life again, the sorcerer noted.

“Well, she ought to remember I’m not a champion at pleading for favours.”

She eyed him sideways for a few seconds before deciding to say what was on her mind. “You might have to start, if there is truth in what people say: Odin’s preference to Thor at your competition for the throne.”

Loki responded with quick wit and lightness: “That’s just nonsense made up by Thor’s admirers,” he informed her. “If you insist on seeing it as a competition, it’s very much even.”

“Is it really?” she asked looking at him, seemingly expecting an answer. Her eyes constantly looked like she was wary or suspicious of you; it had taken a while at the beginning for Loki to figure out that it wasn’t actual sulking at the world in her.

“It may not look like I’m winning right now, that’s all,” he said to the trees. “Thor’s doing it better.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know… Something,” he shrugged, bitterness hidden behind gracious nonchalance.

“Well, you’ve been improving fine in sorcery. And you’re smart. You’ll figure something out, won’t you?” she said then for comfort, and it stole a genuine smile onto his lips and eyes before he could have stopped it.

The sensation lingered on for a moment while his form dissipated from her side with a green scorch, and he caught startling Grima’s bridle a few feet away. He separated from the maiden wordlessly as he led the resigned beast back towards the post, with some subtle good mood humming inside him; so he didn’t retort for the beast softly tossing him aside with her weight repeatedly, in revenge for taking her freedom.

This leniency tended to visit him when in private with Sif, because then he could relax: the maiden didn’t care to hold grudges lengthily. The personal goals she had set left no time to run after pesky annoyances for futile threatening. Loki enjoyed their harmless chatters, even the silences. Hell, at times he even helped at guiding public attention away from her body’s mad hurry of releasing life, so she could leave the scene unnoticed. To counterbalance it, he strictly kept a self-proclaimed limit, only following her when her wounds seemed severe enough to threaten her consciousness. Why he felt a need to hold onto that balance, it remained undebated. Perhaps he was being sensible enough not to give her false ideas and possibly aggravate her unwillingly. After all, no one else approached her without an intention to seek trouble.

She stayed remarkably indifferent towards this generosity. Occasionally, while he let her powers knit her bone and flesh back together, she would even go as far as noting on Loki’s attitude to people: that he should be a bit more allowing with them. She never denied that she found his harmful tricks utterly boring, as simplistic as these witless brutes, even though Loki seemed rather like the intellectual kind. (Well, that was the point, actually, lowering to their level when he sought to entertain them: to gain their attention and perhaps some hints of the rightfully demanded recognition.) Only once, Sif also inquired if he was aware how he was leaving more and more enemies in his wake. _I’ll just play them against each other if things go that bad_ , he responded with overacted conceit; he wanted to show off with confidence before her. His desire to stand tall before her came partly from the fact that he’d never won against her in a duel before, although his defeats were nothing close to devastating, and rather dragged out.

She would chase him around the arena eternally if he had let it, if he had kept on waiting for an opportunity to catch her off-guard. To his strategy-oriented perception, their duels were like the same record played over and over again, or a loop, ending up in the same checkmate situation that would have cost his dignity to maintain for long. She was unapproachable, her blade and shield inseparable from her, her stamina a bottomless pit. She could have been invincible – only, her blade was terrified of his skin. It kept on the chase, whatever dance pattern he chose, her eyes and breaths increasingly infuriated in the battle fever, but the blade had never once grazed him. It looked unmistakably like she pitied him and held back, and the sorcerer found it hard to exploit that – he’d just have given truth to his suggested incompetence. But that changed nothing: her wins only supported the public’s scorn at him, him being among the plenty that were defeated in rows by the maiden.

She couldn’t defeat Thor, for instance. That also itched in Loki.

But, unlike others, she had never made a single note on his abilities since he had healed her for the first time, and he self-righteously took it as an apology, because he was fine with spending this time with her in exchange. She was predictable, she generally kept away from competitions of manliness; she only got offensive when attacked. Loki always knew which of his witty comments were going to rile her into slashing back, mostly verbally. These expectable clashes could have been boring, had it not been for the rest of the day: witless clamour in public and constant scheming in his chambers. This way, however, it was next to her where he wound down.

-T-T-T-

He only peeks up at her from his scribbling after a minute. A tall, flowing feather waves in his hand as he lifts it from the paper. His desk towers on a pedestal, rich and heavy, full of parchments, codices, wax. His clothes are fine and embroidered with gold. Fingers sparkling with jewels in the candlelight, shadows lining his cheeks.

“I’m phrasing an edict,” he explains unasked, unmoving, his tone like he still marvels at her arrival. Then he returns to his work, licking his lips in concentration before placing the feather tip down again.

She complies with a sigh. “Who are you executing?”

“Humanity’s bests.”

“What for?”

“The vanity of excelling is a sin in the eyes of God.”

She isn’t doing her best at looking impressed.

“And I’m also jealous of their popularity with women,” Loki admits reluctantly while holding the quill away from the paper and leaning on the desk to look at her.

“You got the book then,” she concludes.

He smiles, a smile more grateful than his words. “It’s not a codex of history, it’s a children’s story book.”

“Only more or less. It’s a textbook for pupils. And actually more than you’d be allowed without my instrumentality.”

There is a minute’s silence, which she doesn’t interrupt because she sees in – the glint of his eyes? His breathing? The movement of his scribbling fingers? Whatever it is, she suspects that he’s holding a pause before saying something significant.

And then there it is. “I came from Hel,” he notes looking up at her. “I tricked Hela into sending me back. That’s how I’m here.”

“Hela? Thor’s sister?” Her astonishment is rightful. “She’s dead.”

“She’s beyond death. Remember the immensity of her power.”

“And you? How did you arrange your trip to Hel?”

He studies her face, her knowing expression. The shadows around him begin a distorted dance. When the thick but rapidly melting candle leans towards a pile or parchments and darkens the edge, his look is gone; he pushes the light source farther and returns to his paperwork. “ _Liber Linteus_ ,” he mutters.

“ _Linen book_?” she frowns.

“It’s an ancient earthen manuscript with valuable secrets, and also the price of my answer to an upcoming question of your choice. Don’t worry about remembering it, I’m sure our chatters are recorded. And no, the answer is not because I belong there.”

She smirks. “I’m not sure your answer is as valuable as something ancient.”

He smiles back at her, his eyebrows shaming the innocence of an angel. “Try them.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of this was based on an idea from a novel of my people.

-o-O-o-

Loki had grown dismayed. Annoyed. Could have been frightened, if the phenomenon had existed in this society. Perhaps worried, or something of sort. Because the tightest group surrounding Thor now consisted of exactly the few smart ones; they didn’t yield to his manipulation, so they couldn’t be tricked away from Thor, or turned against each other. The toils he occasionally set up for them straightaway improved their teamwork; it wasn’t only Loki they would gang up on, when one of them did fall victim to his mischief at times. Together, they now formed a single pillar standing tall against the malice of the increasingly competitive crowd of youth. They acted like they stood above the others; by now, they could even afford to pick whose challenge they spent time on. They responded to Thor’s impulses, followed his cheer, and even when they advised him against one of his reckless decisions, their arguments happened in merriness. And they went with him when invited, whether it led into valour or demise.

Why?

Who was Thor to them to earn that?

Who were they to occupy that place?

No answer offered itself, and Loki found it hard not to wonder, even harder to bear the futile musing. The hardest was still not to loathe the brother that had long replaced him in this shameful manner.

The series of failures and the frustration made him lash out on clueless Thor one afternoon, while the two brothers walked away from the training grounds. The elder prince listened to his slightly dishevelled rant wide-eyed. He didn’t even care to deny that Loki’s agony had completely escaped his attention. After all, the trickster was also there among the trainees, he took part in spars, and he was made fun of just as much as anyone else. Thor didn’t see how this was exactly the point. He’d been convinced that Loki had this fixation on angering everyone for some deranged form of sheer fun.

Maybe he did. But that was nevertheless the minute he stopped talking to Thor for good. After declaring the new policy, he retreated into his chambers, intending to spend the next hour loathing himself and then devise the ultimate way of revenge on his big stupid brother.

He was still at the first point deep into the night of High Moons when quiet knocking was heard on his door. He rolled his eyes and repositioned himself at the opposite end of the room, moping on his folded arms at the window until that simplistic oaf would grasp the silence and leave.

He only left his fort of resistance after the noise gradually turned into soft but continuous, two-handed ramming, with the occasional riff of Loki’s name, varying between quick snaps, elongated hisses and tuneless, freshly mutated singing. Thor was obviously bent on stirring him out of his supposed dream. While walking towards the door, Loki spent one last moment contemplating to send him off to Hel, and then he peeked out through the narrow opening he allowed, his silence signalling his unwillingness to bargain.

Then again, Thor was never very attentive to delicate gestures like that. “Brother, we’re heading out,” he whispered through the gap. “Come, join us swiftly before we get discovered.”

“What?” Loki attempted to catch up. That wasn’t quite what he had expected.

“Out,” the blond mouthed the keyword more articulately. “Hunting. Training. Adventure.”

“I’m not interested,” Loki mumbled then instead of the questions rising in his mind, about his brother’s mental state, about his knowledge of the dangers awaiting tonight, about the reason he was here inviting Loki out of the blue.

“Monsters, brother!” came the explanation unasked. “It’s High Moons, all is astir, and we can fight so many things!”

The sorcerer huffed in irritation. “You’re the most astir around, Thor, and it’s exactly why only a fool joins you tonight.”

“And not even one! Make up your mind quickly, there’s no time to lose.”

“How many exactly?”

Thor hissed quietly while thinking. “Five, six? No one but the most valorous can know. You better keep it to yourself, too.”

The number surprised Loki, in truth. And the fact that Thor was inviting him along, although he was aware that it was a mere favour as a reaction to today’s quarrel. But considering Thor’s straightforward nature, the intention could have been taken for goodwill, he decided.

“I don’t care for your self-proclaimed trials of strength, but I won’t let anyone know unless you go missing in the morning,” he said leniently. “Enjoy your blood bath.”

For reasons ignored, the force pushing against his attempt to close the door made him smile behind the precious wood.

“Come with me, brother. It’ll be the best adventure if you’re also there.”

After a few second’s wait, the sigh Loki let out carried a century’s burden. “Fine, let’s kick some hinds at your fancy.”

Thor burst into the room in the middle of the sentence. “We have to be swift! You’ll need the dagger, though, where do you keep it?” he inquired snooping around the dimly lit room in a hurry.

“ _The_ dagger?” Loki asked with moderate interest, not expecting an answer.

He didn’t voice his dismay over Thor moving through his shelves like they weren’t private, partly because the oaf’s ignorance amused him. Yes, there was that one time Thor got to encounter _the_ dagger of his remembrance personally – tiny Loki had wanted to teach him not to approach dangerous creatures on his own –, and that had apparently led him to the strange derivation that it was the ultimate weapon Loki wielded.

“I haven’t had that one since were eight, Thor. I left it somewhere,” Loki noted now, and then he savoured the sight as his brother unconsciously massaged the side of his ribs while taking in the answer.

“Don’t tell me you’ll fight with your magic,” Thor said then facing him with the frown he wore whenever he was taking himself more seriously than he should have; this time causing Loki to frown back.

“What’s your problem with it?” And when had his problem started? It was the first time Loki wondered about that.

“It’s fine as long as your life isn’t in real danger. Show me what you’ll use to defend.”

The trickster swiftly rummaged through his angered mind for the most annoying spell to splat between those overconfident summer-blue eyes. But then he took a deep breath instead, down into his stomach, in respect for the trust he had thought to be lost and just gained back by Thor’s visit. What the hell? He was supposed to be in a foul mood today.

An upwards flick of his wrist raised a short and slender blade close to his brother’s unflinching face. He repeated the motion with his other hand. Another flick, and the pair of daggers disappeared, giving place to two stout little blades hidden in his palms. As he lowered his hand, his fists held two lengthy, curved knives, their hooked tip pressing to Thor’s stomach.

“Oh,” he exclaimed theatrically. “There it is.”

His gaping was that of mock surprise as he jerked a single dagger out, apparently from the blond’s side, and he held it up so they could both marvel at the familiar handle. Thor’s reaction, much expectably, was an approving smile and a pat on Loki’s shoulder, before leading them out of the room.

“Behold, my treasured brother,” he introduced the sorcerer to the group waiting near a secret exit of the palace.

“Pleasure to meet you, Your Highness. Sorry for kicking your rear last time you were trying to backstab me.”

That was Volstagg, and Loki let his smile spread at the hint of sweet annoyance perceived. “I reckon you had some assistance at that kick, though,” he noted.

“It’s a perk of having friends. They also teach you stuff. Get your own sometime, it’s worth it.”

No time was left for an answer because the group of familiar and semi-foreign faces departed in the line of shadows towards the outskirts of the city.

“Arras,” repeated the young sorcerer later, to confirm the trouble with his hearing. “The dragon Arras, most ancient creature stuck on this plane of the Universe, the one weakened in strength and spirit and still more powerful than all of you put together?”

“Yes, yes, that one,” he heard his brother from farther in the unlit forest they were crossing.

“Arras that breathes fire from his nose and mouth, flaps storms with his wings, stomps landslides with his feet, loves red and green cinder?”

“You forget the most important part,” cackled Volstagg from the direction of the biggest ruckus, already reeking of stirred mud and bodily fluids of slain beasts.

“His excrement buries half an army and drowns the rest in its gases,” Loki nodded guessing the man’s thought, although he knew the true value of Arras was the knowledge he held.

The codices didn’t, but oral tales often mentioned that the blood of Arras too bore power over your fate, and upon consumption, it would ever-lead you to good fortune. It was an unproven supposition no more worthy than gossip. Truth described him as a beast that had been left behind by his folk because he was the kindest, mildest among them. That didn’t mean much here, he was still too vicious for anyone to approach unguarded and survive. He’d been tricked by his very kin, knowers of unspeakable cruelty and slyness, offered to dwellers of the World Tree for capturing, to get rid of him. The ancient creatures that had once but passed through these realms had no interest in mercy or compassion.

“And you decided it was high time he was released,” the sorcerer concluded while alternating among the narrow paths the others laboured to dig out of the vicious thicket.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the goodwill of fierce warriors like us,” Thor heaved merrily during his work.

“Thor wants to befriend that grump,” noted someone farther away, inducing laughter in the scattered group.

“And if he doesn’t succeed, we’ll just cut his head off,” said Volstagg amidst affirmative cheering, and Loki had his plan by now on how to gain what he could from the once-in-a-lifetime encounter, with the possible sacrifice of some comrades, if the ones involved weren’t apt enough to fend for themselves. They most likely knew the risk they were taking when appearing here anyway.

As it turned out while they crouched on a cliff overlooking the heavily guarded structure, his cunningness was but a scented breeze against the walls of conceit.

“Let me list just some of the million faults in your supposedly well thought through planning,” he started.

“You haven’t even heard the plan yet, twit.” Volstagg interrupted.

“I don’t need to hear it to depict how you’re going down here.”

“If we go down, everyone is coming with us, including you,” hissed Hogun, who hasn’t been seen engaged in conversation with anyone on the palace grounds during the days. “So you better listen to the veterans and work along for once, if you’ve been allowed in. Teamwork is crucial here!”

“It is you dimwits’ lousy teamwork I’m worried about,” Loki argued.

“Yes, so here’s the plan,” Thor cut in with both voice and body before any other response, his grasp firm on the sorcerer’s shoulder. “The smallest of us creeps down there first, sneaks in to the dragon through the feeding hole and opens his chains.”

“Who?” Loki frowned.

“Arras hasn’t moved around for centuries because walls were built around him, he’s probably too weak to fly for now, and he needs space to take off.”

“Sneaks in where? To the malicious bastard? By his mouth?” Loki demanded with harsher doubt.

“So when his limbs are free, he needs to break all the walls and then run down the hill until he can lift himself up from the ground.”

“The chains? On his ankles? In his deadly droppings?” he was close to yelling now.

“But the guards will notice the stir, so this is where the rest of us come into the picture.”

“The most valorous shall enter the dragon’s cell,” he pointed out firmly.

“When Arras is ready to start destroying the walls, you need to send us a signal. Then we attack, and while the guards are overwhelmed by our power, Arras can get free unharmed and join in the fight. With his assistance, the rest of the army will be out in a breath. Literally.”

The sorcerer perceived the malicious cackling of the other members, chewing on his lips in silence.

“Or better, I’ll be covering you from the back,” he blurted out quickly. Several hands caught him before he could have disappeared in the nearby thicket.

“Come on, Your Highness, don’t leave us in trouble,” was one of the many pleads whispered over each other.

He’d have loved to ask what happened to _twit_ and _imp_ , but it would have looked like he cared about their views, so he kept it in. “I work at the back. Strategy is the most essential part of a plan,” he reasoned instead. “If you don’t have the right person for each role, it is all for naught!”

“That’s right, and you’re the right person!” Thor cheered at him grabbing both his shoulders and beaming like he was sharing a grand discovery. “You can do your silver tongue thing and appease the dragon before he’d burn you to a crisp! Any other of us would perish before we could even address the beast!”

“This is your time to shine, Speaker of Wisdoms,” said another warrior.

“Master of Stealth,” someone added.

“Weaver of Flatteries,” said yet another.

“Conjurer of Charms!”

“Wielder of Words!”

“Silvertongue!

“Prince of Cunning!”

“I am all of these,” Loki agreed with a stern silencing gesture, stopping the pleasing choir midway towards his heart. “Thus, you will listen to me and follow _my_ plan.”

His look could have burned through the entire forest lying before him while his shapeshifted form slid along the stone wall towards the feeding hole.

Brainless dimwits. Mindless oafs. There were no minds to manipulate there, thus his failure, he finalised.

Sweet, sweet knowledge, he chanted in his mind; take the secrets and leave, or better yet, stall in hiding until daylight and force the troupe to return home. But take the secrets first. Or at least try, if the beast is dumb enough to be goaded into it at all. Regardless of the outcome, skitter away and never return afterwards, leave the oafs to wait till their patience runs out. Have them realise they’d been deserted, or rush in to fight the guards in revenge for the supposed death of the younger prince, it was all the same to Loki. Or: just sneak away without revealing presence and tell a tale about the miscalculations, as intended at the beginning.

Except that dragons could see through magic, also lies, and they were immune to any form of sorcery.

“Entertain me with a joke already, pest, or I’ll let the guards know you’re here,” came the thundering grunt as proof.

Loki grew tall against the wall next to the child-sized opening as he let the magic drop.

“Ancient, wise Arras, I have come to free you, not to mock,” he whispered.

“Liar, liar, sit on fire,” the dragon sang coarsely.

“You see the true light of my words, just as the tales tell about you,” Loki awed.

“Who is the lamb that has truly come to free me?”

“My reckless brother. He would have you as a friend and an ally in the upcoming brawl. And I _would_ free you, you know.”

“If?”

“If you gave me your answers to-“

The rest of his condition was drowned out by the gurgling laughter; the wall trembled to its rhythm behind Loki’s back and sweating palms. Arras spoke calmly after his amusement levelled down. “Come, stand before me, so I can take a look at you, hungry little worm.”

Loki tactfully remained where he was. “I shall stay here a while longer, lest I should suffer from your whim and take your chance for freedom to the grave with me.”

“Remain then, I have nothing but time to wait. As long as what your people call an infinity.”

“Speaking of it, I heard your life is trickling away along with the sands of our time,” Loki said choosing a sympathetic tone despite its futility.

The lengthy silence was the most satisfactory answer he could have gotten, and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards as he continued: "I could put a stop to that, right here, right now, while you still have it in you to extort revenge on your millennia's tormentors."

"Pest,” spat the vile creature to himself.

"You'd be free to go," Loki sang huskily towards the lightly smoking hole. "Do you remember freedom, mighty Arras? Do you still know the way you were going when this atrocity befell on you? Do you see your kin in the distance, leaving you no chance for vengeance unless your chains are broken and you can hunt each down?"

"Your limited perception amuses me," cackled the beast heavily, once again shivering the walls. "Fine, I'll let you attempt to tackle these chains. As for the price you demand, it comes when you live to ask again afterwards."

"It is certainly tempting," Loki sneered, "but you forget I have no way to tell if you're fooling me."

"Well then, how about you return when you found a way to make certain of it?"

"All right, Arras, I shall rely on nothing but your word." And maybe some conditions forged during the procedure, after the beast got a foretaste from the long missed hope. "I'm going in now. Be so kind and don't harm me while I'm inside labouring in your favour."

"Sure thing, _brother_."

Not entirely convinced, the sorcerer transformed unwarned and skittered into the dark through the hole as quickly as he could, a hair away from a treacherous fountain of flames shooting at him.

While Arras laughed heartily, Loki's magic dissipated from surprise inside, the stink of brimstone and decay tearing at his nerves. He still had the mind to clamber away from the mammoth-sized, playfully stomping feet, shakily mounting the scaled back, dismayed heaves recording that the nauseating fumes were just as thick up there as in the stain around the dragon's legs.

"All right, all right, I'm finished with the jest," said Arras; his amber eyes glimmered in the light filtering through the entrance. "I see you're apt enough to assist me. Rest assured and get to work. My flesh is too vain to move me, I fear; you need to make the blood flow in it again."

"What?" Loki's heaving breath formed, possibly not for the first time today, while he wiped endlessly trickling tears from his stinging eyes.

"You get it. I have no room to stretch or flex, so just knead me. If you wish later to show off to your people with my company, that is."

His lips and jaw clenched around each curse he uttered while straining to massage the iron flesh through the finely fitting scales just as his life depended on it, in an attempted hurry but muscles soon shaking from the effort. The dragon's pleasured moans and grunted commands riled his anger further on. Until he grew motionless at one point, staring at the circular areas of ragged surface on the large body. He counted four within his shadowed field of vision, but by their position, he suspected there to be one or two more. No scales were visible on those regularly shaped patches, only concentric circles in different rates of blackness. He shivered at the conviction: they were the remainders of severed heads.

"Don't you dare stop, I'm almost there," came the pleasured command. "Legs!"

Loki bit down on anything he had to say or ask, partly because speech might have induced the retching his stomach was warning on as he hopped down into the long cooled knee-high excrement again to find the chains in the slob.

"Don't worry, the dirt is weeks old already, won't burn you," said the dragon with unveiled amusement in his raspy voice. "It's just before the day of cleaning – my dreadsome waste is removed at each Blystar's alignment."

The sorcerer’s puffed eyes wept for the lost knowledge almost as much as for his own burning lungs, and for the efforts wasted on nothing, while he laboured on impatiently to get out of here as soon as possible, magic helping him open the locks on the rusty cuffs. He still had it in himself to mind the remaining potential: while fiddling with the last ring around the dragon’s rear ankle, he tapped out the gaps between the scales ragged from the lengthy scraping of metal. A blade in a skilled hand would slide in easily for a few drops of the blood: a marvellous tool for stirring up people’s greed and thus some amusing havoc among them. But only after finding out if the stolen treasure was indeed worthless. Some people might die in the process, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. And if it turned out to be a viable tool for turning someone’s fate around… he already had in mind several means to utilise it. Amongst all, there was a particular maiden who could have used some good fortune to avoid the constant brush of death.

To camouflage his ploy, he tugged stronger at the remaining chain, as if he’d had trouble removing it. And then, habitually trusting his tongue for deceit, he made the mistake of cursing the stubborn cuffs verbally.

It proved to be enough for his cunningness to be seen through: the chained foot suddenly knocked him over into the pool of lukewarm stink and stepped on his stomach. “You want my blood, you little worm, you maggot,” cackled the dragon in malicious joy.

“It-it is but a small treat, nothing against your person,” Loki coughed out under the pressure, straining his neck to keep it afloat. “It would even help reawakening the flow in- Please, you’ll never get rid of these chains if you kill me now-”

“You wish for an easy death,” growled Arras calmer than the fierceness in his hold. “I know better. You free me and I won’t drown you in my stools.”

“We both know your deals, mighty Arras,” pressed the young sorcerer through the clawed toes around his neck, his lungs tightening to keep out the harmful gases. “I’m afraid I’ll have to demand my release beforehand.”

After a short pause, the pressure eased. He clambered up to his knees by the chains, fighting the nauseating knot in his gullet. He hurried to fulfil his part, eager for nothing any more but being away from here, preferably near a body of water. He charmed the metal open, and with a determined push away from the vicious creature, he headed for the hole opening to the missed-for-aeons, blessed forest air.

Then again, it might have been wiser to stay wary. By the time he realised that, he was on his back again near the entrance, thankfully on dryer ground, this time a front paw holding his stomach and pelvis down, heedless to his threatening snarls and the clawing of his soft hands.

“Wait just a tad more,” Arras cooed, adjusting the sorcerer’s position to his own comfort like he was handling a doll; “you can’t leave without a present. I am grateful for your aid, you see.” His claw scraped over his tongue, drawing a little blood, fiery glow and heat. “I’ll give you what you were trying to steal.”

A shudder ran through Loki at the darkness sensed in the announcement, smoothing out into an even tremble instead of stillness as another claw tore his shirt from the neck down to his stomach. His lips shut tight, he glanced up at the mighty creature over him, facing his promising elongated death quite nonchalantly. He surprised himself with how objectively he was able to observe it, although his self-willed body didn’t, it was still faint and shivering like an autumn leaf. A moment before the storm pierced his mind with the regret of leaving the people he held dear (a pair of eyes dark and observant as if inspecting a tool), although the thought was strange and reversed; his protesting voice interrupted stumbling over the lump in his throat, but he was unable to get up, and his hands clambered in vain on the unyielding paw, around his pockets for a weapon, disoriented by the pain scorching through his chest. He couldn’t see from the scaled limb what was happening, but the fire assaulting the inner walls of his veins jerked his throat into a scream. As soon as Arras reached into his own mouth again, the sorcerer’s feet kicked at the squelchy goo to get away from the continuing torture, but the weight remained holding him in place.

The dragon tore Loki’s soft skin with concentration, humming quietly meanwhile, sometimes words almost comforting, sometimes light scorn. “I’ll give you my blood that you so desire, my magical, fate-bearing blood,” the words reached Loki’s mind in pieces. The overlying screams came back from the narrow walls multiplied, ravaging his own eardrums. His muscles threatened with breaking at the effort to arch his pinned body. “Your people believe it brings them good fortune. They’re not far from the truth. But it also carries my endless malice. Be thankful, you’ll get some of the knowledge you thought I bore for you. Soon, you’ll know what my blood’s so-called blessing means for your own meek self. Maybe not so soon for you. You’re one impatient folk, always want everything in a blink, because your lives are brief and your greed vast and you’re tiny, tiny like your vilest demons you tremble from.”

With such musing, the dragon’s claw scraped a pattern down the middle of his chest. Each streak intruded Loki’s nerves and sent fire through his entire body; the next line always overlapped the first one’s falling wave, thickening it. He barely heard the mock-comfort when the thing was finished, he only realised he was free to skitter away when the beast’s body slammed into the crumbling stone wall repeatedly. In the silence between the explosions, clattering of weapons and battle screams filtered in from outside. Loki faded in and out of existence as he strived to move his body consumed by invisible flames, up from the unfelt ground and away from the structure collapsing around him.

_There is your good fortune, maggot_ , the grunt echoed in his head, perhaps only in his lapsing consciousness; _because I like this naughty streak in you. Were you not so fragile to face the world outside yours, you could be my apprentice_.

His answer, if his forming thought was something particular at all, roared loudly in his head as he tried to speak. Through heavy eyelids, he perceived the closeness of grass, rough pebbles, ruins of a stone structure farther away, and lots of movement. His clothes stuck to him in putrid clusters. Whoever had rescued and carried his unconscious body out of the ruined fort had already escaped back into the fight going on in the area.

His chest burned in protest while he sat up and leaned to the tree trunk behind him. From this moderately comforting position, he deciphered the fight he was not inclined to join, and the tall mass against the night sky in the middle of the bustling field: Volstagg and another warrior were pushing against the dragon’s large backside with all their might, helping his tardy clamber towards the slope. He could tell Arras was overacting his exhaustion for the hell of it. He heard Thor urge his comrades to hurry with the dragon’s rescue, lest their efforts would be in vain and their new friend’s life ended. Loki snorted weakly, the same moment the beast made it down the hill and his wings wrestled his weight into the air.

Amidst the Asgardians’ cheering, the ancient creature floated over the hub of the fight, his form seemingly in constant growth. It was a warning that most of Thor’s people noted and jumped away from. Arras didn’t watch who got involved in his business when he dumped a load of manure onto the mass of riled-up fighters. Those caught in the burning slob met a gruesome fate: the fortunate ones went up in flames instantly, others wailed long with their last breaths before the heat and the gases cooked them alive. The ones that were near during the blistering hail crawled away wishing for a quick death.

“In return for your helpful interference,” grumbled the beast over the moaning choir, and with a relieved sigh and new strength, powerful slaps of his wings lifted him into the heights, never to be seen again.

The remaining soldiers, with nothing left to defend, skittered away from the dauntingly spirited young warriors, scattering in all directions towards the thicket. They let them go, because some of Thor’s group dragged a wailing friend away from the stinking mass of death, and they all gathered around to wonder about his survival. Loki recognised him from here in the dim night, it was one of the standard braggers; he also knew what the others suspected, that he won’t be walking on his charred legs again. He waited patiently for the others to arrive to the conclusion and decide to head home with him right away.

“Loki, we thought you were dying,” Thor let him know gaily as he lifted him to his feet by an arm and ran along the passing group. “We attacked as we heard you wail like you were being burned alive.”

“Because I was, thanks to your marvellous planning,” the sorcerer spat while steadying his steps.

“From these few scratches that made you faint?” Volstagg chortled.

“Want to trade?”

“Eh, no way your measly body could bear my proud battle marks.”

“Are you cursed?” Hogun inquired, but since no one could ever tell from his tone whether he was being sarcastic or genuine, Loki let the question slide with a roll of his eyes. That put an end to the discussion of the events inside the fort, and he was grateful for that.

After getting the adventure they so desired, they all stumbled home on the verge of fainting from it. Two of them had to carry the dismembered comrade to the infirmary, thus unable to escape attention. Thor and Volstagg: they took up the responsibility of getting reprimanded and staying silent about the others’ presence. The rest of the group could sneak back to their places unnoticed, eternally grateful to them. Hogun would quietly make sure later that no one spoke and risked leaking out information about the night, with the aid of his expertise at torture. He was already known for his specialisation, it was rumoured that he could put up with a fingertip or an earlobe from the opponent to make them wallow in agony. No one was aware, but he was the single person Loki was careful not to offend directly during his schemes. The last thing he needed was to be humiliated like that before the crowds.

That night, Loki was the first to clear off the scene. Sent. “Don’t be a doofus, you’ve got the best abilities at hiding. You can get away from here the easiest. Volstagg is so fat he can’t even hide behind that column, and Thor started this whole thing, he’s not afraid to take the blame.” Loki wasn’t afraid either. But it would have been a waste and “strategically stupid” (by Thor) if he had remained with them as well.

Loki wished to be there, it seemed like a source of tremendous admiration among these fools. But lately, he also hated facing Father together with Thor. The pointlessness of those debates had been making him more irate each time. It was never about him anyway, he was very apt at pushing the blame on Thor, and when he didn’t manage, the clownishness of his mischiefs were nothing Odin was willing to fuss about. And Loki wouldn’t demand his acknowledgement, he was respectful and obedient as formalities required. An obedient, mischievous trickster son, doing fine in the King’s eyes and failing on the ground of feats. A paradox. A void, gaping for guidance. A question mark.

So that night, without starting the lengthy process of defining himself, he spun round and hurried into his chambers, gliding in shadows and through the window, no longer occupied with the fate of the others, determined to sleep soundly regardless of the outcome that wasn’t his concern.

He spent several more hours over the wound across his chest: a crude but intricate row of something that looked like runes or writing, coarsely angled, clear lines glistening as lifeless gems. His reflection in the mirror showed the skin intact, as if unable to comprehend the touch (Curse?) of another world. His body had calmed down from the assault by then, only the ache of a burnt wound remained. He tried everything in his powers to get rid of it, in a systematic order from magically extracting any possible energies to burning it off his skin with conjured flames. That’s the point he stopped trying, abhorred from the coaly smell of his own flesh. Even after he gathered his mind enough to heal the area, the runes remained. Lips tight, he forced himself to be grateful that he could camouflage the mark of his foolhardy greed with an illusion, at least.

-T-T-T-

“The manuscript you seek is nothing but a calendar from the ancient Egypt. A corpse was wrapped in it back then.”

Loki’s eyebrows arch in innocence against the expectant look of Fury, who is standing with arms crossed before the cell, the strictness of his face unyielding, if not rebelliously overacted.

“Which means that my answer can measure up to its value, after all, correct?” the sorcerer inquires, sitting with hands between his knees, his sharp suit and tie fitting his outlines in perfect folds.

“What exactly do you intend to do with it?”

“To take a look, obviously. I’m well provided with paper for all other current purposes.”

“You’ve got enough paper for looking too. What about the books I generously afforded you? Have you burnt them?”

“I’m not allowed to conjure a fire in here,” Loki lets him know meekly. “It would sound the alarm and possibly end in some form of punishment.”

The dark figure observes him in silence for a while, the one visible eye attempting to bore through the skin and skull and cerebra to capture the message-bearing electric signals. Not like it unnerves the sorcerer after he recalls that himself is the one with that actual ability.

“I’d be interested in that specific slice of culture,” he admits under the pressure.

“What interests you in it?”

Loki suppresses a long, tight-lipped sigh of hopelessness, his look darts around the ground. “I’m sorry, I don’t easily share personal discourse with my jailers.”

“You do when the Lady Sif is here, despite knowing that every word you utter gets to me as well.”

“She’s not getting paid for _those_ questions, however. What’s her wage here, by the way? Just for reference, you know.”

Fury laughs silently, unamused. “I’ll say this once and for all: you are not getting a job.”

“You’re missing a great chance. I’d love to bring you good word from my previous employer, but he wasn’t much into writing.”

“I know exactly what he’d say about you.”

“You _believe_ you do, that is. Pray, let me put li-“

“I’m not here to discuss the Titan,” Fury’s bark interrupts, and Loki mentally notes the name down as a point for manipulating tension. “That motherfucker played you like all of us. I want to know what shit you’re here to stir this time. This planet’s defenders are still edgy from the previous guy you brought along, so another one will most likely cut your path to Asgard’s mild little ways of amendment.”

“I came alone this time,” Loki assures him. “And in all honesty, the destination wasn’t exactly my own choice either.”

“Whose then?”

There it is; the sorcerer faintly wishes for that personal discourse instead.

“Hela’s?” asks Fury through the silence. “Who’s that one?”

“My step sister, goddess of death,” Loki says what’s most likely already known from Thor. “That matter is out of this world, nothing humans will ever be able to concern with, so rest assured.”

“She clearly has access to this world, if she was able to send you here.”

The teal eyes turn towards the ceiling for salvation, then his index finger rises. “Give me a day to respond.”

“What’s that? Brain getting sloppy from all the comfort? Would you like me a little tougher? Cause we can play that game as well, and we shall soon, as my patience wanes."

Drowning his response in an amused smirk, Loki decides to ask instead: "What bought my way out of it in the first place?"

"Let's say I’m just this much of a mushy motherfucker," says the director with lousy acting.

"Then give me a chance to prove my worth through actions, benevolent one."

"You have your chance. A few answers, and you're on the right path towards my soft kitty-heart."

"Words, you've had and didn't take."

"Because your words were bullshit. Coming here for nothing? For an innocent Sunday stroll? You're making my interrogators laugh."

"I’d have embarked on a search for my brother and base my following actions on the result."

"I can help at that: he doesn't seem eager to protect you from us big, ugly humans."

A laugh hisses through the sorcerer's teeth. “And how did you win the Lady Sif for that cause?”

“She did tell you that, didn’t she?”

“My person was hardly the main reason. What did you tell her? That people are suffering without divine interference? That the meek little humans need her protection?”

“That’s a trade secret you have no access to.”

“Does _she_?”

“It's classified," presses the man.

“What do you make her do?”

“ _Make her_? Do you know her as someone she can be ordered around like that?” Fury asks, and he adds while walking to the door: “The Lady Sif is on our side. I’d be surprised if you’d think you have an ally among those pretence gods by now. How many years has it been of your pranks? Two thousand? Three?”

“There is something I can share,” Loki says softly, and waits until the man turns back to pay him the required attention, the searching look drawn to the newly assumed attire of familiar leather and green. “I’m getting out of here eventually, most likely sooner than you're calculating. So you’d best think about that future and leave her alone.”

Fury’s grin is nothing sort of intimidated. “I see your concern, God of Mischief. I see a lot of things you might not even know. She’s not your weapon to threaten me with; she is, in fact, mine, and I can use this valuable asset either for the same purpose, or to help you get along with us. The choice is entirely up to you. Take a day to think about that.”


	4. Chapter 4

-o-O-o-

“Well, this is a shame on all levels,” he mumbled, his tone coloured by subtle glee.

“Shut up, or I swear I won’t rest till I break your nose.”

“Is that how you speak to one doing you a favour?”

“My apologies. Your Highness, please, fall silent at once to preserve the majestic shape of your profile.”

It was after a training session out on the fields. Her elbows were holding her clothes tight over her front, and Loki was healing ragged, crimson trenches across her back: humiliation of a warrior, it was said, its extent equalling their fame and skill. And her fighting style did become magnificent during the past years; it had crystallised into her own personal moves, and her body changed with it. Loki was familiar with details of her skin and the texture of her flesh on body parts most frequented by weapons sharp or blunt, although they were only revealed one bit at a time, and joining them into an encompassing view could only have happened if he had bothered to do the math in his imagination. It was a very strong _if_ there, nothing like that ever went by in his mind apart from those infinitely natural boyhood dreams really not worth a breath. What no one could ignore, including him, was that the work had toughened her flesh, thickened her hips, rounded out her arms, her shoulders. Her features kept the softness of a woman, but her posture intimidated; she angered many and gained the recognition of the few worthy ones with her graceful strength. She wasn’t attacked at random any more – bullies avoided her out of fearful respect learned on their own skin. Courting her openly was scarce because of this; she was fortunate enough to have but the bravest, noblest finding it worth to try breaking in on her very much straight path towards improvement, only to meet the friendliest forms of disinterest.

Today, she’d been reckless, carried away by the closeness of victory in a competition against the elder prince, right into the nest of Stormbird fledglings, with the mother just swooping down to gobble her up. Thor was a tad late with the rescue, or just on time, depending on the point of view. That oaf hadn’t had the wits to go the easy way and get there faster, he did his famous straight-line entry, the only one he was capable of in Loki’s perception. And she, she was then _thanking_ him, even through her dismay, her cracked pride, the ruins of her carefully built-up reputation. But what did Loki have to do with her personal decisions? Peeve her, that’s all he had.

Just before the silence would have stretched long enough for him to look obedient, he asked what everyone used to be curious about (faintly wondering if they had long found out since then): “Why are you so bent on earning a name in the palace anyway? Who’s the one that asked you for proof?”

She shrugged with her good shoulder. “I don’t want to prove anything to anyone but myself. I’ve always enjoyed fighting; my dream has been the honour to be the King’s protector. In my homeland, they laughed at me, tried to shove me back in line, so I want to see if I can make it. I want to see I can do anything I want. Because that’s what freedom is. Doing what you want.”

Loki understood; she was speaking words that had been lingering in his head. And he wouldn’t figure out why it didn’t work the same way for him, if he thought the same way.

While leaving her to get dressed in private, an idea made him linger on instead of walking away. He leaned to the wall of the storage room outside, waiting until she emerged from the hideout beside him. Height was about the only thing at which she fell behind him in the past years, he noted. And maybe common sense, as proven today among other times. Her hips were definitely broader than his; not her shoulders, most likely, but the vest he’d been sporting for a while generously prevented any embarrassing comparison.

As it had occurred, their ambition seemed to compare well.

“There might be a fine opportunity,” he said as she passed him by; “to display your worth and gain reputation at the right places. If that’s indeed what you’re aiming for.”

She didn’t seem much intrigued, or at least not excited, but that wasn’t only why her question was unexpected: “Who’ll be there?”

Loki’s eyebrows arched at her straightforward response; then he opened his mouth to mention himself, as the self-evident information it was, but something unnamed made him reconsider. “Thor,”, he said instead.

“And who else?”

That question he was fine with. He ignored the suspicion that she might simply not wish to share her side of the rumoured topic with him. He brooded nonchalantly, scratching his ever-smooth chin meanwhile, not sure who else she could be curious about.

“Hogun. Volstagg,” he guessed.

She agreed to be there then, thanked for the invitation as easily as she had said _please_ early on. It was a riddle yet to be solved.

Fandral was there that night, one of the newest faces in the privileged group that had otherwise been diminishing in number. “Lady Sif, what a pleasant reunion. Pray, let me hold your hand on the way, so your beauty illuminates my path in this dark night.”

“Shame, I’ll need my hands for myself,” Sif responded without presenting him a glance, though failing to dismay him with it.

His smile was bright, his tone conversing. “Well, I’m fine with grabbing onto anything else of your convenience-“

“Last time you did that, she sent you to the infirmary for a day and a half,” Hogun reminded him instead of her, ending the conversation.

 _You didn’t say this pig would be here, too_ , she mouthed to Loki shortly afterwards.

 _What do I know_ , he retorted whispering; irate about the fact that he’d never known she was bothered by this guy. And how should he have known with her keeping silent about it, really?

She patted his shoulder with a pacifying intent in response, her look already on Thor that came to share tonight’s plans with them. Somehow, the lenient notion only annoyed the sorcerer further.

Hunger for adventure led them to an area with countless lakes of a freezing fluid that stank like ale-soaked men, grassland and swamps varying between them, territory of the Tryngom, and more importantly: home to Lolla.

Lolla was a creature of mediocre legends; a recurring subject of dark humour and protagonist of a superstition. A single spike broken off from her body was to ensure a life-long supply of the finest bedding company. Her stories recited the perish of many heroes and the survival of none. Proving them wrong promised a good laugh for that day’s nine young challengers.

The problem only really arose when they found themselves surrounded by armies of the half-beast-half-sensible water folk. Whether they knew of the visitor’s purpose or acted on routine never occurred during or after the battle that started and quickly went downhill there. Thor, wielding a pair of mighty falchions, capricious lightning and his unveiled ego at the time, didn’t even notice two of his mates being swallowed up by the volatile ground in a single gulp; his fervour blocked out the others’ calls and his brother’s yell: _this field is not fit for battle_.

“You should know who you defy, you curs,” bellowed the elder prince, running against a horde of Tryngom. “It is your future king you are facing, the undaunted prince of Asgard!”

“You trespass,” was the answer to his outraged retort.

“I do not trespass in a land under my reign! It is known what befalls on your kin if you raise a hand on me or my people!”

“Odin’s reign is his. we cannot know who you are, liar,” said one of the Tryngom that quickly surrounded him in a deadlock.

“I am Thor, son of Odin, you unknowing creature! My name flies across the nine realms!” the blond’s rich voice pushed bravely against the spears pointing at his vital organs from all directions.

“We fear and respect the Allfather’s might, but offspring means nothing to us. You’ll all be sacrifice to Lolla,” said the creature and directed a hit from the spear downwards between itself and Thor. The skilled move opened a spluttering crack in the fragile ground: they both disappeared from sight.

A moment’s stun sent another comrade into the icy depths before the brawl continued, as the creatures were bent on guiding all members of the group to the same place. They fought on without the usual sharp mockery of each other or the enemy, as if their mind had been numbed by the downfall of the strongest, until Fandral stirred out of the dismay.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, what do we clash for?” he yelled over the clamour with pretended merriness. “Our intentions are the same! We’ve come all the way here to meet your gracious creature, just the same as you want us to.”

“The female won’t,” said the creature facing Sif. “Lolla doesn’t want female. She dies now.

“Not the lass, you insensitive dolts!” Volstagg stirred but was quickly oppressed.

“Try your luck, beast,” the girl challenged the hostile circle forming around her, royally ignoring the men’s debate.

“Don’t you lay a finger on her,” Fandral hissed as he fought to get through the mass separating him from the maiden. The rest of the group didn’t get a chance to defend her before she deflected an assaulting spear with a metal-covered lower arm and dipped her sword under the crusty skin of the attacker.

“No more of us dies tonight,” she announced while kicking the corpse off the blade.

“And especially not the tender lady,” Fandral hurried to agree as he stood by her, along with some other warriors. Loki felt he was never going to get used to their thickness as he watched them rile the proud maiden into the suicidal berserk he now presumed. Perhaps bringing her here was a mistake while she was so bent on proving her worth, to herself or to whomever else. Maybe this trip exceeded the skills of their entire group, he thought as he redrew into the mass of the night at a beneficial moment. While deftly evading the stirred creatures’ volatile fields of attention, he sought a chance for escape: the group’s, Sif’s, or even his own. But before the right amount of intel would have stood together, the battle in the hub came to an abrupt end, and all attention turned towards it. The remaining few members of the group had been surrounded once again, in one idiotic cluster opposite Sif, who was held still by a pair of the creatures, a third walking towards her with long, leaping steps, weapon raised.

“You are free to challenge me, vile being, I’ll slay you down in an instant,” she snarled at the attacker meaninglessly. 

The spear halted before Loki’s throat then, rendered motionless as it found him in its predetermined way unexpectedly, his palms held up in a pacifying manner.

“Now, you have all right to be vengeful, but surely you don’t want to end Odin’s bride,” he warned meekly.

Silence fell on the mob for a moment; then fishy eyes narrowed, their astonishment manifested in squelching throat sounds. The silent but betraying exchange of glances among the captives went completely unheeded.

“Odin’s wedded is not dead,” said the creature facing Loki. “The Queen of Asgard hasn’t sailed down the sea of farewell.”

“Not yet, technically,” the sorcerer agreed slyly, sending the mass into unsettled murmur, while he slightly moved over to prevent the struggling lady from attacking back and starting another unequal brawl.

“I am no one’s bride,” Sif’s burning voice intruded the discussion, her ignorance assumably purposeful at this level, while she ridded herself from the unnecessarily clinging pair of water folks. “Come at me in any numbers, I’ll take you on alone.”

“See?” Loki moved in the creature’s way again as he motioned towards her. “The Allfather is all about a fiery maiden like this. You better not anger him by ridding him of this treasured possession. I myself would be quite abhorred from watching your entire race wiped out in revenge.”

“I am no bride!” she repeated harshly to the Tryngom while attempting to push the sorcerer’s shoulder aside. By now, the rest of the group was openly chuckling at the pair’s interplay.

“She is,” Loki smiled at the creature lightly as he danced skilfully back in her way.

“Upon my word, I am not!” she yelled.

“She’s delirious. But very desirable to the Allfather.”

“Then you go to Lolla still,” the Tryngom grunted. “And the bride be our slave until the Allfather brings consolation for your insult.”

“You dare not!” Fandral harked up over the quickly reacting water folk, backed up by several other men’s stir.

Ignoring them, Loki bit his lips and nodded at his opponent encouragingly.

“It is your ground, your right to decide.”

“I am neither deranged nor bride to an old fool!” Sif yelled while she was overpowered by an increasing number of the enemy. Loki only beheld her from the corner of his eyes, working behind his silence on a way out of the slippery situation.

But before the lady could have been dragged away, they all heard it: the rumbling of the depths resonated in their heads rather than their ears. The Tryngom stopped dead on their track for a moment, as if all intentions had been forgotten. The ground was preparing to dance. The rhythm, though irregular and frequently interrupted by tremors that threw around and loosened up the battling masses, was still recognised. Loki shouted in sake of the newbies: “Get away from here!”

All grasped the situation in their own respective pace. With Thor about to zap the world to counter the thing unseen, they were not to be present and live to tell. Sif was one of the few who hadn’t seen him unrestrained by manners inside the palace walls: after tearing herself out of the loosened grasps, she idled around to strike back at the creatures. Loki yelled at her so hard his throat hurt, repeatedly, while he was passing by farther away. And the thick-headed maiden returned his angry look like he’d just arrived from space: it was when his legs sank into nothing and his body swung ahead from the speed; a fluent wall smashed him in the stomach and face and rushed into his throat uninvited.

He was dazed for no longer than a moment, then his limbs pushed him upwards in the squelchy nothing, but it was too thin to hold onto and too dense to break the straight travel downwards. Deeply rumbling darkness pressed around his ribs and mind in a tightening hold. Someone’s yell crept through the mass thickly, possibly his own. In the growing array of sparkles, he sought a spell that could lift him out of here.

He was jerked upwards by the back of his collar midway during the process; his mind barely grasped the sensation by the time several hands reached for his arms and torso, tugging him back onto the damp air, which was sweeter now than honey dew and staggered on its way into his lungs through the remainders of the stinging mud he was eager to get rid of.

A mere few steps dragged him along the ground until he pulled out of the patronising holds and got onto his feet, taking up the pace of the running group, irately repelling assaults from the water folks in their wake. Through his pulsating embarrassment, he recorded that the number of familiar figures around him hadn’t diminished during his descent.

The muffled sounds mixing into the clashes of armours and blades turned out to be speech around him as the mud cleared out of his ears. He deciphered and quickly summarised an utterly meaningless debate over rescuing Thor: yes or no, dead or capable of helping himself. They clearly had no idea whom they praised day by day.

“He’s dead! Look ahead so you don’t end up the same!” he commanded interrupting the quarrel, not just to savour the astonished stares at him, but to simplify the matter they wouldn’t have understood without a lengthy speech: if Thor had the power to survive this, he was well suited to return in one piece.

Then again, an attempt at that speech might have prevented Volstagg to clasp his neck in a single hand, heedless of the knife tip pressing to his neck artery at the same moment. “Use another breath to support that, I dare you,” he growled.

“No time to settle this!” Hogun warned while beating back a pair of waterfolk.

“Listen to your friend, he’s just teaching you better,” Loki suggested, a little hoarse from the pressure.

“Can’t, I have a lesson to teach myself.”

“No brawls now, we have to go!” Sif yelled at them next.

“We could settle this at home, you know,” Loki agreed.

“So you can slither away from confronting your brother you let down so easily?” barked Volstagg, and he seemed to grow and inch as he leant over the sorcerer’s undaunted but significantly smaller figure. “I don’t think so, not until you take it back.”

“Then go ahead and prove me wrong now, smartass,” Loki hissed.

As if on cue, the Tryngom all disappeared in the waters at once, unwisely: a flickering, thousandfold forking light-river blasted through the land. The ground jerked like a giant stabbed, a fast-rising and falling heap overthrowing their balance. Those who looked while clambering up could see Thor fly against the swirling clouds, sparks framing and battle fever straining his figure. In a minute, however, he fell and hit the ground with a wet sound.

The cheery laughter rising in the group no longer concerned with Loki’s wrongly made statement. Thor was already on his knees, bellowing something deceptively similar to _run_.

So they did.

They proceeded groggily on the feverishly dancing ground that hummed its own deep melody right under the surface, until the older prince’s absence caught up to their attention. A few jogged back to prop him up, the rest slowed down gradually to perceive the scene. Before retracing his steps, Loki noted his brother lying on his side in a circle of kneeling figures, and Fandral holding his head, yelling at him to breathe like it could be forgotten. Thor was white as a marble statue and shaky as a leaf, his mouth gaping in silence, his arms crooked helpless around thin air. It was a never before seen image; it was surreal, a mere painting, which you could stare at unable to enter. Loki was gliding along its surface, an outsider, as he drew closer; he wasn’t touching Thor’s body, he was feeling up the seamed linen painted with lots of white, grey, blue and black to depict the frost-bitten air meant for his eyes and meaning nothing to his fingers. His powers mended darkened fingertips, blue palm, ashen limbs among the torn scraps of metal and fleece to help the blood’s halted flow, in mechanical obedience towards the textbooks, the tons of unfeeling paper that ignored the instinct’s yell to mend the heart first, the vital organs, the lungs. He worked in cold awareness that he was letting death slip in right beside him. But death was also just linen and paint, this was not Thor and not the people unprepared to let him go, it was but a picture dyed and hideous as the highest level of art.

He tossed foreign hands roughly away if they intruded to massage his brother’s heart back to life; how did they not know it could have shocked a frozen body? Had they not been frequenting chilled lands for aeons? Were they such fools that they entered without caring for the rules of survival?

Sif had learnt the proper skills, at least; after the sorcerer finished with the limbs, she slid in his place without a sound, to perform what many, including Loki, hadn’t witnessed but heard the rumours about. It was a skill she shared unafraid of showing the kindness that made you vulnerable, and still greedily, firm in her stand of sharing whenever and wherever she pleased. The occasional worthy ones praised her treatment to Heavens.

Her hands danced on the freshly repaired but still frozen muscles with unknown, deft movements. They seemed light and fluttering, but they tugged at the rigid flesh mercilessly, calling colour back into it. Her hands moved over to the stomach area only after that.

When Thor gasped for breath, all did so with him, their praising choir meant as aid. He was up while still struggling to make up for the loss of oxygen, keeping up with the group without falter from then on. Loki observed his tenacity from the corner of his eye with a taste of ire in his jaw and felt the mud on his clothes heavy; his share, unevenly dealt, seemed to be merely to end up in some stinky goo whenever Thor and his pals were involved.

The remaining little solid terrain broke at random places, making their travel tardy, even with the water folks all out of sight by now. The occasional bulks and towers rising above ground level for moments were suspected rather than recognised as parts of Lolla’s body; none of them had time to make a move at it to fulfil their initial purpose. The croaking and gurgling sounds indicated that she was having a grand feast from the water folks.

“Wouldn’t have thought she was into stress-eating,” Fandral noted between two heaving breaths.

“Had we known sooner, we could have used it to our advantage,” Sif added.

“But it wouldn’t have been nearly as efficient as using your dashing feminine charms to stun them.”

“Are you saying my sword wasn’t enough for that purpose?”

“Speaking of it,” Hogun interrupted the preparing ridiculous courting scene once again, “do you think these guys are immune to alcohol, swimming in this thing day and night?”

“I’d like to try them at a drinking competition and see someday,” Volstagg laughed, accompanied by Thor.

“Maybe next time we could visit at daylight with the purpose,” Fandral suggested merrily.

“And you can look around for some charming Tryngom ladies to woe,” Loki noted, his smile showing his purest intentions, heedless of the surrounding cackles.

“Maybe they’ll help you to Lolla for a tryst,” added Volstagg in loud cheer.

“You can mock me as you like, but you got no closer to victory than I did,” said the charmer.

As they got away from the hostile ground meanwhile, they slowed into a march; mourning over their own pathetic failure, nothing broke the silence but the tough pummelling of their boots and the clatter of weapons for a while.

“Well, you can throw out all gained experience then, I assume,” Sif noted with a hint of mockery at the men’s distorted value system. “No spike, no honour.”

The sounds Thor produced then appeared as if he tried to speak, but the language he used was something rapid and incomprehensible, coloured by some otherworldly rattling. The others stared at him, and he growled in irritation. To everyone’s surprise, Hogun broke the baffled silence.

“He obtained the spike, he says.”

“You did!” several of them cheered, and Loki rolled his eyes while they surrounded the blond’s bulky form without a break in the marching pace. “Where is it? Show it!”

Once again, Hogun understood the deranged mumble due to some miracle. “He lost it when he flew out of the swamp.”

“Sure you did,” the younger prince mumbled amidst the disappointed grunts while scraping the persistent, drying dirt on his face. “Especially since those spikes are physically impossible to remove. What you grabbed onto must have been mere nose hair.”

“Upon his word, bla bla,” Hogun summarised the overlapping row of gibberish.

“Thor, you’re freezing!” Sif deduced finally from the uncontrollable chattering of the blond’s teeth.

“Just like you do, brave maiden,” Fandral observed.

“Not at all. I was in for no longer than a second.”

Loki’s look darted at her unwittingly at that, blood creeping into his temple at the suspicion.

“That’s just enough time for you to get uncomfortable. I’ll be eternally dishonoured if I cannot offer my aid at warming you up, at least this way,” said the charmer while reeling the mantle off his back.

“That’s very noble of you.”

Unveiled snickering awoke in the group as she took the warm clothing and splayed it across Thor’s shoulders unasked. His futile attempt at verbal protest got ignored.

“Take it,” Hogun advised him. “Those swamps are filled with alcohol colder than Laufey’s hind-wind. It’s well enough that you came out at all; you should freeze to death in a minute if you fall in.”

“So how did our two princes survive it?” Volstagg wondered.

“This one is unstoppable when riled into it,” Sif answered, gesturing towards each brother respectively. “And this one is a sorcerer when he remembers to be.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that?” Loki challenged.

“That all you ever remember is helping yourself,” Volstagg explained falsely instead of her.

“That you remember keeping yourself warm before your brother that’s been three times closer to death than you,” Hogun added smartly.

“I’m not keeping myself warm,” the accused protested. “Perhaps the man of the day is just not man enough to handle a little cold.”

“Right, Liesmith, and that’s probably how we lost three fine men today. Honouring them with the truth is not in your nature, I assume.”

“You know, if we’re discussing each other’s supposed faults now, I remember my brave big brother going down among the first,” he noted suggestively. Not that it mattered, Thor could have done ballerina flips and these bootlickers would have cheered him on all the same.

The possible response was prevented by an unexpected, one-armed, ice cold brotherly embrace. Fandral translated the gesture this time. “Says he loves you regardless,” he said, making the others smirk.

The faintly resisting sorcerer was given his freedom by Thor’s powerful grasp at the back of his neck that set him back onto his separate path. The blond might or might not have been grinning – such fine motions were out of control at this state of numbness. And Loki silently wondered about that; he had felt the cutting chill but didn’t record and vehement change in himself. He tried to remember if he had any instinctual magic run through his body while his mind had been fumbling around for a wholesome spell in his repertoire.

“You might want to elaborate on brotherhood to this one, and perhaps add a word about respect for comrades,” Volstagg grunted.

“Far from me to underappreciate my loyal underlings,” Loki explained, and a scarce moment let him savour the sweet, sweet aggravation induced, “but going down is part of warfare, that’s not for me or anyone else to change.”

“To me, personally, a _thank you_ to the Lady Sif would suffice,” Fandral interrupted the volatile moment before it could have unfolded. “If it weren’t for her eagle eyes-“

“And my exceptional deftness,” added the lady.

“-you’d long be an icy statue at the bottom of this pit, Your Highness.”

“Or soaring way ahead of you all,” Loki corrected, openly self-righteous, defensive about his dignity even at the cost of being rude to the one he owed his life to.

“Sounds reasonable, just like you to disappear first when there’s trouble,” Volstagg sneered.

“And having ladies watch over your life,” Fandral insisted.

“It was quite the accident, in fact, I slipped,” Sif admitted.

“Sure you did, I saw you practically jump after him into the swamp.”

“I got off-balance, it was either that or a broken nose.”

“That’s some strange priority,” Loki frowned at her, like the point didn’t really bother him.

“Yes, well, your pride may be important to pamper, too, but the truth is that I’d rather die than live on with a distorted face.”

Finally, the group was laughing again.

It had been an… interesting flow of events. The warriors’ derivation of some deranged logic continued on the way home: Sif got rather approving comments, even compliments on her having the guts to be here. Hogun noted that she had more balls than some other guys among the trainees. Loki listened to them in bewildered silence. The praises made her smile, her dark eyes characteristically not laughing along; that made her appear like she had already known whatever was said to her about her performance.

By the end of the journey, it unmistakably looked like her acceptance into the group had been decided.

“You’re fine, Sif,” was the last note to her when they scattered in the palace, and it did peculiar things to Loki’s stomach.

-T-T-T-

She is unable to pay her visit for a while: then it takes even longer to conceive how to present herself, and she secretly also waits for time to crawl on faster, for some change (a miracle) to happen that would let her know it’s the right time, or that would relieve her from this duty. But no such things happen, naturally, and the time lost flows back at her from the Director's mouth. _That was uncalled for, Lady Sif, very uncalled for. You lost months of work for us with your misplaced heroism. Yes, you saved several lives, and don't misunderstand, I am grateful for that. But we're losing loads more in exchange, innocent people that never signed a contract for potential death. The ones we're going to lose won't be prepared, won't understand what's happening. The ones you've protected at such a price did._

And so she loiters in wait for a long while, looking out for some intangible form of mercy. And her anger for Loki's idleness grows each day. The younger prince doesn’t seem to be in much need for his freedom – or he is just being his usual obstinate self, possibly plotting something implausible for an unforeseeable future. Either way, it leaves her in charge of stooping low at last, and she despises every minute of it.

Loki’s magically projected image is throwing knives from a checkered armchair at a holographic target on the wall when she walks in, her legs carrying her on without falter despite her reluctance to enter. The trickster stirs up with eyes wide, and his real body walks through the illusion before it could vanish, although dressed in a familiar green shirt probably lost long ago.

“Why didn’t you get my help?”

The berating tone hits her coarsely, but she doesn’t respond, lets the presentation to be over as soon as possible. She knows, feels the look run along the left side of her face and neck lined with plasters. The gush, still discoloured and throbbing with aches, looms through the gaps, runs as forking hairs near her ear and thickens downwards, coils under the high neck of her sweater, causing her entire left shoulder to crawl; her arm is captive to a white cast hanging from her neck. She’d have left this behind by now, if she could have proven that she was capable of living (fighting, walking, breathing) from the pain at the slightest strain.

“You’d have used the opportunity to elope,” she points out dryly while sitting down on the chair at the opposite wall, farthest from the cell, not returning the intense stare.

Only for a moment is he speechless, then he retorts sternly: “Yes, I would have,” he snaps and walks to the back of the cell to hide from his rapid defeat.

Upon his return, he bends forward in hope to get a better look at the ragged wound.

“You were patched up with the crudeness humans call medical aid,” he observes with brooding softness. “It’s like a child’s dabbling on something of my skill.”

She shakes her head irately. “Be it as it may. You’re not coming out just like that, Loki.”

“I know. How did this happen?”

“I acted rashly, not the first time.”

“It’s not from a weapon humans could wield. Is it poison that slows the healing? I would take a look.”

“It isn’t your primary concern right now,” she presses. “I’ve come to see how much more willing you’ve become to reason with your captors.”

Although she says so, her free arm folding over her torso, and her downcast look, don’t care to hide she’s eager to be gone from here instead. This lack of uphold in herself isn’t a new sensation, but she can’t put her finger on the source of it. Is it what humans are capable of doing to you? Or what else has this effect? The air? The work? The wound?

“I understand that it’s your business,” Loki says ignoring her last note. “But it will scar without me, if it heals at all before killing you. You’re aware of that, I assume?”

She smiles faintly with the intention of looking composed. “Humans are one of the nations using surgery, it can help if it’s that bad.”

“Surgery? That means cutting you.”

“To treat me.”

“They can’t even get through your skin, the tools these doctors have.”

“Remember, SHIELD here deals with more than this planet, they have the right tools.”

The sorcerer’s look clearly indicates that she’s a maniac, and his condescending tone matches it. “Get me out, Sif, and I’ll take care of it.”

Baffled inside, she seeks the mockery that his previous questions suggested; they are there, reassuringly, but his insistence puts Fury’s tactical move into a new light in her eyes. That it would actually work has not occurred to her in earnest so far. And the discovery stirs her up in unexpected ways.

“I’m confused,” she voices her thought, softly like she’s talking to herself. “When did my health return to the shortlist of your concerns?”

“Since it’s just you and me stranded here,” he answers unfazed. “Nothing else can help you now, can it?”

Her pride flares up. “Haven’t you just seen me walk in here on my own two feet, ready to beat a giant? Why would I need help, and yours, especially?”

He’s wearing a veil of composure over his annoyance. “Sif, I understand what you mean. But – without the intention to start a dispute, mind you – you speak about letting these runts open up your body. On purpose.”

“You actually find it possible to start a dispute?” Her astonishment shown has no limit; she's uninterested in the actual point.

“Sif-“

“It doesn’t matter, it’s my own concern anyway. It’s not up to you to decide. Never been, in case you ever thought so.”

“Right.” His fingers massage his tense jaw in apparent brooding before looking at her again. “I wonder, can I watch, to have a good laugh as you humble yourself to receive their worthless aid? On a screen, possibly?”

She can sense his anger burning almost tangible behind his light tone, and just now, she isn’t sure how she ever believed that this group of humans could hold down an Asgardian. But helping Loki to his own twisted plans wouldn’t bring about anything good, so she remains in the clownish role she’s been dealt, thanks to his usual selfish game, his delight in keeping up trouble just for the sake of itself.

“Perhaps you could, if you weren’t still fooling around in this cell,” she answers, her speech now low and rapid. “This way, I’m sure you aren’t allowed to observe their technology in any form. However, you could try cooperating, and perhaps earn a term of probation out of here.”

Loki digests her note with a frown, chewing on his lips while contemplating his response. “Is this blackmailing?” he voices it finally.

His eyes are venom green, she notes at her fist glance at him today while she spits her last note: “What do you think, o gifted one?”

“Some twisted form of generosity, allowing yourself to be used like that, Sif.”

The note follows her until the door finally draws shut behind her, and she hurries off with long steps, making her way towards the training halls, hoping to arrive before she’d be noticed and stopped for health reasons, and before her stifling thoughts would catch up.

-o-O-o-

He had recurring dreams of running. Not from, but after something. He was always the hunter, the chaser, the one with growing anger as the thing (rabbit, light, closing windows, gusts of wind, different each time) kept slipping away. Sometimes he didn’t even know what he was running after, only that it was ahead of him, and he was tracking its unseen trail, out of breath, out of strength, out of his mind. Waking up after these was a pain, irritation lingered on inside him for a while; it made him wish to break things, even people. That made it difficult to set his mind on specific goals for a while, even though time wasn’t lenient enough to stop for him until he got back into the comfortable sense of control.

“Shape it into something, will you?”

He blinked away the last of his drifting thoughts: this was no longer a place to muse freely. “Into what?” he inquired.

“Whatever you want.”

“It can’t be satisfactory unless you tell me.”

The Queen smiled leniently. Loki was a clever one; and especially since he started growing up, he detected and evaded her subtle attempts to see into his head. It was quite the normal occurrence, she was not to watch over her children for an eternity. That motionless, frigid tension straining his ever-capricious demeanour from inside had clearly been indicated as out of her concern, but she couldn’t help her interest straying towards it now and then. Just this one time, letting go didn’t feel all right, she wished to hold on a little longer. It could have been because blood didn’t tie him to her, or because he was her youngest, her last one. Or – what could as well have been mere clinginess – simply her instinct protesting against sending him off into the world on his own just yet.

 _He needs a father_ , she had dared say it to Odin once.

_Am I not? How could I be any more of a father when I’ll be sending him away to coldness in a century?_

_And he is yet to know, yet to prepare._

_Not a word, my Queen. Not a word._

That was Odin, father to all, upkeeper of nine realms’ peace, being a coward.

And this was Frigga, appointed mother to someone she was to love and then toss away.

And love she did.

“Try something that thrills you,” she suggested lightly.

The teal glow of seidr, so similar to his eye colour, flared up in the nest of his five fingers.

“I love balloons,” he protested at her disapproving look. “They’re exciting, so many games to play with them, so many things to fill-“

“Please, take this seriously.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, his face dressed in innocence.

Her voice was gentle as always, her patience genuine. “Show me what you can do with that energy. I want to see how well you can control your raw seidr; how intricate is the flow you can influence.”

In response, finally, he shaped a jade smoke-horse over his palm, galloping in place, turning, prancing.

She smiled approvingly.

“Now make it jump.”

The mare ran and leapt over an invisible cleft.

“Make it worried.”

“Worried?”

“There is rustling in the bushes. You know how Grima reacts.”

The horse braked into a standstill, its nostrils alone widening and narrowing with each breath, eyes darting around, ears scanning the area like telescopes.

“Escape. Elope from a tiny rabbit that got stuck in dry weed.”

“Grima doesn’t do that,” Loki noted while the horse jumped an incredible height, and its four legs were already running in the air before they reached the unseen ground.

Her answer was but a sly glint in her eyes.

“A flowery meadow, beaming sun.”

The mare pranced forward straight, and then began an airy-earthbound-fluid waltz of self-proclaimed pattern, head alternating between thrusting towards the sky and bending down for a bite. It rolled over and rubbed its back into the good-smelling grass unseen to the observers. They both chuckled silently.

“Now change it.”

“Into what?”

“It’s a shapeshifting horse, you deem its abilities. Be quick!”

The energy lost its distinct shape, and then the billowing mass formed into an eagle mid-flight. Unmoving, Loki glanced up at his mother to guess her intentions.

“That wasn’t quite shapeshifting, just you changing your mind. Try again, be swift but also punctual.”

The robust bird, while comfortably riding a gust of wind, had its legs thicken, two more limbs grow out, feather replaced by scales and rough skin, head grown and elongated.

“Better, but you made it easy. This is a heavy creature, it labours to stay afloat, so no more stopping. Again.”

The sorcerer worked soundless and obedient on the fluent magic in his hand. Kicking legs and wings disappeared, body narrowed, giving place to a snake coiling fast in air or water. It thrashed about to keep in motion for the task; it curled up, biting its own tail. Loki suspected that it still wasn’t satisfactory.

“Again,” Frigga went on softly, her look on her son’s tall forehead.

A ring of green fire was formed from the elongated body, cinder and smoke flying up from it.

“Again.”

The flames twisted and coiled around each other, forming a tall, slender, pointed structure of two peaks, an occasional component of his dreams. He deemed it too still but received no comment that wold have revealed her stand.

“Again.”

Thor’s lanky-muscular form, in a helmet with short horns and a nighttaur hide mantle danced around, as crazed and merry as the previous steed on the mesmerising flower field.

“Again.”

Loki’s eyebrow twitched when the mockery had no effect whatsoever. He was running out of patience for the purpose unseen to him, and growing fed up with her suspected dissatisfaction. The Thor in his palm multiplied this time, becoming several other figures from the trainees, sharing the blond’s silly joy, now supported by both of the sorcerer’s palms. This had to do.

“There is a feast,” the Queen pointed out.

His look darted around on the marble floor for a second, and then the minuscule group became staggering drunk with ale.

“Is that how it goes?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“Each is different, and you’re an excellent observer. Show me your skill.”

Within a few seconds, one sat and behaved, another courted and groped servants, a third gobbled up things endlessly; others bashed weapons on table, danced, a few drank and laughed with each other, patting shoulders, kicking rears. Loki’s impish smile met Frigga’s above the scene. And then she finally took her chances.

“What about Lady Sif?”

“I never really looked.” The answer came without hesitation.

“Do you think her insignificant?”

“She’s one of a kind here. It’s hard to predict how long she’ll remain.”

“Is it? Aren’t you already thinking she’ll be gone soon?”

“She might,” he responded evasively, staring at the silent ruckus among his fingers. He was less and less sure about it, in fact, but now he didn’t think it would change anything even if she remained.

“Is it pity then why you so kindly heal her wounds?”

The teal seidr fell and disappeared for a second, only to rise again forming a tiered fountain in the nest of his palms.

“Yes.”

The brief answer hinted at an ocean’s depth of silent responses, and a desire for them to remain undebated. He tactically let it show, and the Queen accepted the step.

“And if she was to stay?”

“Then I’ll lose faith in the Royal Army.”

This was as far as she risked pushing against his evasion. Her hands covered his shaped seidr, making it disappear as she engulfed his fingers to catch his look one last time.

“Don’t you ever be disrespectful to her, Loki,” she said, though her voice lacked any accusation.

“She’ll die in the first real war,” he breathed then, hoping that this particular idea satisfied her uninvited curiosity.

“Is that what you have observed?”

His head turned away, his hands escaped the captivity. “It’s clear as daylight. A maiden doesn’t belong here.”

“What about the Valkyries?”

“They were a separate race, Mother. They were born to be warriors.”

“So was she.” The Queen knew the disagreement in his silence. “If you hadn’t healed her wounds, I would have.”

“Out of pity?”

“No. Because she belongs here. Her valour is for a grand purpose. She is meant and willing to protect the next King.”

That would be Thor, Loki thought now, unless he came up with something to turn the tide. _If_ there was a tide to turn at all, unlike he’d been feeling lately, although he was aware that it was all in his head. But the wait of these long years, the unseen end of it, the unreasonably haunting possibility of it all being in in vain got the better of him on some days. He had nothing to lose with asking. “Has Father decided yet?”

Her response was unexpected: she pulled him to herself, her forehead resting against his temple regardless of his permission. Her cool hand lay under his jaw affectionately, his frown of discomfort escaping her vision. But she wouldn’t have heeded it anyway while she was bent on hiding her own expression.

“I know it troubles you.” She spoke in a hushed voice. “I am not to know which of you is worthier of leading our people, and I thank for that blessing every day. Do your best, Loki, work your hardest, become your best self, that is all you do. And we’ll see what’s coming. We’ll all see eventually. But always remember, it doesn’t matter to me who either of you becomes. Never doubt that I love you.”

He let her keep his forehead against hers for just a bit longer, and he afforded honesty for once. “I won’t, Mother.”

-T-T-T-

Loki’s mirage is cooking up a storm in an illusionary kitchen, even the sizzling is heard in the pan. No words sound between them while Sif walks in. He studies the warmaiden with some grouchy form of interest while absently flipping a pancake in the air. She has a sensation like it isn’t the wound he’s glaring at; rather like something is on her. She deliberately ignores the heightened sharpness of her injured skin’s itch; she turns her back on the captive without comment, holding her human talking device close to a larger one in the wall and touching digital buttons on it, in the uncertain pace her tardy comprehension of earthen mechanics allows.

“Thor sent something to you,” she announces after successfully launching the process at last. “You’ll get to watch it through this screen.”

Loki watches leniently as the image is projected before the cell, meanwhile taking a partially unpacked cube of butter and rubbing it on the now empty pan in contemplative circles. Sif isn’t quite sure his eyes see what’s going on in the film.

The video shows part of Thor’s beaming, hairy face and some other figures behind him in colourful winter caps, more occupied with each other than with the camera. They’re all singing _Spirits in the Brave_ , an Asgardian song often recited on drink fests. Thor claims to have taught all lines to the tipsy group, and then asks the viewer to see the result; his point manifests in the obscenely distorted lines returning from the humans’ mouths.

The excess butter drips off the pan while Loki seems lost in deciphering the scene. Sif, standing next to the screen, can’t help wondering if his illusions are consciously acted out in their entirety. But since the prince is pathetically lost at what to make of the video, she helps him out instead of asking. “Earthen attitudes suppose you laugh at it, he probably expects it from you too.”

Loki glances at her, then back at the screen, and he lets out a polite amount of snicker, probably just to humour her. “Please, kindly pass it on to him,” he requests.

“That’s not quite how it works,” she mutters while freeing her own device from the wall and slipping it back into the rear pocket of her jeans. Which happens way too easily, and her cheeks heat up in remembrance: she’s wearing her checkered lumberjack shirt the way it was adjusted by Agent Hill this morning ( _Excuse my intrusion but it’s been months and months, and I’ll just go ahead and tuck this in now – that’s right, there’s the girl hiding under the folds, see, nobody died and you look like you aren’t even from space, these high-waist, skinny jeans do a great job at showing the licentious curves of your-)_

“So, a laugh? Is that all you want to tell Thor?” she asks over the undesired flashback as she turns around.

Loki shrugs and pours a generous amount of illusionary paste into the dripping pan, heedless of the previously escaped butter drops smoking on the outer edge as he places it over the fire. “You could always tell him to drop that lass and find a worthier occupation. That’s the only thing that concerns me right now.”

She knows it isn’t, not only because he doesn’t care to lie perfectly. “What exactly are you concerned about?” she inquires still, sinfully glad about his evasion of the most pressing matter.

“That he isn’t capable of looking after himself. These humans _watching over him_ , as you seem to believe, can’t even comprehend what he is, what we are. You know how irresponsible he can be. What if they… Norns, what if he actually makes her queen? A human, queen of gods, imagine that.”

“You’re overthinking, really, even he wouldn’t go that far.”

“You’ll be at fault, you and the Warriors Three. They’re supposed to be there with him, that’s why they–”

Both his speech and movements stop abruptly as he stares into the distance. Then he frowns at the tower of pancakes next to him like it had just called him a dwarf.

“What in heavens are they doing?” Loki asks of the wobbly structure.

She rolls her eyes and refuses to repeat what he’s already found out earlier.

“Come on, imagine this horde,” he points at the place of the previously shown screen, “roaming through the palace of the new Asgard. How do they look?”

“Your cake is burning,” she mumbles, her look darting back and forth between his face and the phenomenon, in hope to decipher its nature.

He slaps down the half-black-half-raw paste on top of the tower, causing it to start sloping under the misbalanced weight, but he pushes it back up with the palette knife.

“Ridiculous, that’s how they look. Sif, if you happen to be right and Thor decides to found a kingdom with that midge on his side, what next? Who will follow a clown like that?”

The wrinkles between his eyebrows have deepened since she last saw him in Asgard, she unwittingly recalls now. And some other lines, too, but nothing new or even close to rough. Something different is that makes him look more aged, but she’s not sure what.

“That’s not going to happen,” she corrects him meanwhile.

“Would you bet your life on it?” He splats the leaning tower in place with the knife again.

“I reckon you said he’ll never found a new kingdom; what has changed?”

After a few seconds’ silence, he throws his hands up during the confession: “If you’re supporting it, most likely everyone is. That’s how it’s always been.”

“But that has never affected Thor’s decisions. It might not be the most popular truth, but you can predict him better than anyone else.”

“I’m not going against that. But still, my oaf brother is a people’s man; if he’s counted on, he’s there. And I can’t assess from here how many share your expectations of him. Norns, I just realise how much you’ve unsettled me.”

It’s the moment for the pancake tower’s sneak move. In utter silence, it leans in and stretches out in front of the sorcerer, knocking over the bowl and splattering paste everywhere around the illusionary kitchen, except Loki’s form itself.

They spend a moment in silent reverence over the wasted work. Sif is the first to stir. “What the hell are you doing?” she inquires at last.

The question apparently surprises the trickster. “Wasting good food, obviously.”

She’s reluctant to reveal being affected by the out-of-place phenomenon, but curiosity wins her over. “What is this for?” she asks, eyeing his expression of equal bafflement.

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. Is there possibly something going on between you and pancakes?”

The sharpness in her look precedes her retort: "What about you and this perfection you always choose to show?”

“Perfection would kill the purpose. Illusions are realistic, as they aim to deceive the observer.”

“Really?” she asks, apparently baffled. “Is that why your _realistic_ Lokis always look spotless?”

“As I just pointed out, they don’t. What exactly concerns you about it?”

“How do they not? Look at you just now in this entire bizarre scene. Your illusionary selves are always in the greatest fashion. Every hair is in place, not a crease, not a loose thread. It screams from them that they were born a minute ago, that they have no history whatsoever.”

He looks torn between being insulted and rewarded. “I must disappoint you, Sif: there is nothing unusual about taking care of your demeanour. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not even looking at your...” his look travels down her form; “peculiar… choices.”

Since it’s not the first time, not even the second, it gets to her finally, and she states firmly: “There is nothing wrong with this attire. It’s common earthen wear.”

“For men, perhaps?” he guesses. “I’m sincerely curious.”

“If you want to know, everything I wear was sold at the department of women. They’re perfectly comfortable, practical, and nothing out of place here. They’re far more pleasing to the body than the fabrics of our homeland that you insist on.”

“Is this what you wear while sipping champagne, too? What kind of men do you have to enthral?”

“En-enthral? What are you talking about?”

Her short laugh mid-sentence is the fakest in history, and his raised eyebrows claim he wasn’t even attempting to embarrass her. He’s even helpful at clarifying it: “Well, that’s usually the situation where a woman is paid to drink champagne.” 

She resists the urge to rub at her aching wound by much effort. “I don’t,” she snaps. “Enthral men, I mean. Or wear this on a mission. I’m a warrior, you know that.”

“So they make you approach those gentlemen clad in metal? Perhaps carrying champagne on your shield?”

“I think I was just about to leave,” she mutters and hurries to the exit before her provoked retorts would let him find out any classified information: ruining plans further might just cut her off from the matters her heart was already entrapped in.

“I’m sorry, it was over the line,” he admits, but to no avail. “Or under it, perhaps. Tell Thor to apologise to you in my place,” he tries when she doesn’t turn back.

“Your manuscript is on the way, I needed to tell you that, too,” she notes from the door. “Fury is kindly asking you to prepare to spill _all the rest of the shit you have in store_ , or you’ll be denied both the script and bathroom for a month.”

“Sounds like he’s annoyed at someone else,” Loki mutters seemingly to himself, unfazed. “Now, who could that be?”

Sif cannot know, she’s not entrusted with all of SHIELD’s issues, but she has eyes and ears and assumptions, the latter of which she prefers keeping from the god of mischief. “Have fun brooding over nothing,” she says as goodbye, consequently.


	5. Chapter 5

-o-O-o-

The trail led into the thicket, a line of broken foliage dripping with escaped life; hideous, wet sounds coming from the end of it. Loki immediately entered from the recent battle, with full conviction about what he would find, counting seconds. It still caught him off-guard, so much so that he let the two beasts hark up and scurry off into the forest unharmed.

Grima’s silence astonished him. Swiftly, he knelt beside her, into the slippery mess the spirit was leaving behind.

“I’m here, you’re fine now,” he tried pressing through his tightened gullet that barely let air in; it was forcefully, self-righteously blocking the smell that glued itself to his tongue. “Steady, lady, hold on for just one more minute.”

His palms fluttered over the spilled entrails: all goo and nothing tangible, his fingers dipped into slippery wetness wherever he lightly touched the twitching mass. He sought long and patient for the edge of the opening itself. His breath hitched at each contact. His own guts felt like they crowded up into his throat.

He fought the silly conviction that the creature, which hid so cleverly from the public, was merely _shifting_ ; she would shed the horse skin, as now was the time, and she would emerge as something else. It would be a laborious process, but that was the price of everything if the result was to be something more beautiful than before. Even though Loki had trouble imagining a form loftier than this one.

He didn’t need to look towards the uninvited steps approaching on the grassy path, they rustled with familiarity in his ears: they were the copper-clad, heeled boots of Sif. She knelt down just outside his field of vision, her thoughts unvoiced.

“Nothing to see here,” he mumbled in futile defence against what he suspected to come.

And then she, someone who knew nothing about his abilities, was the one who saved him from the burden of making the terrible decision: “There’s no hope.”

“Be quiet, I’m concentrating,” he muttered.

“Don’t bother, be with her instead. There’s no time to waste.”

“Quiet,” he hissed.

It was her, the one that Loki didn’t want to be and that never bothered with hypocrisy: she was the one who chose to face his wrath herself, and the label of being merciless, with a precious being. She pleaded him, for that one moment dauntingly resembling Mother’s hushed voice: “See her off.”

And that similarity (Was it?) washed over him before he could have responded appropriately, he was unable to ignore the request.

He leaned over the neck of the barely panting animal, resting his cheek against the wired muscle. The scent here was much more pleasant, he breathed her in, it was the scent of her being alive and warm and galloping with him. Grima stirred; Loki buried his face into the crook under her jawbone. He thought that he would miss this form even if Grima was to return as the fairest of all.

Sif left his proximity meanwhile but she stayed near, he heard her send away people following the bloody trail.

He took time composing himself. He poisoned the corpse so anything died that ate from it, cursed the area so anything stepping in with an intent to pass through or build a nest among the bones would shrivel up and die in a minute.

“I’ll need a ride,” he announced to a group of servants when he emerged, blood-covered up to the elbows and down to the legs, walking like gore had been the latest fashion trend.

Thor’s attention fell on him among the others. “Are you all right?” he asked walking closer, eyeing him for suspected leeks on his body.

“My horse was killed.”

“Grima? I’m very sorry, brother.”

“Leave it, it’s just a beast,” Loki said dryly, without the need for a perfect act: Thor was eternally weak at reading between lines.

He rode farther from the journeying crowd, to avoid being remembered by this abomination of a demeanour, the smell that still kept churning his stomach. He needed to swallow constantly but swallowing was hard. He craved and abhorred from drinking at the same time, wished for clear water and strongly flavoured wine at once. He was dizzy from the thick, mawkish vapour of drying blood; no wonder that even the stallion under him was unsettled from it. Obedient as trained, only its deeply bent head revealed discomfort. Loki didn’t blame it, he wouldn’t have been around himself today, if given a choice.

Somewhere along the way, Sif approached on her hefty beast. The prince sat straight by the time she arrived, his chin was high and his ride artistic while they proceeded side by side.

“Stay away if you plan to be among people in the following week,” he warned her.

“I’m carrying the same odour,” she pointed at her smudged lower half.

Loki’s smirk at it was private and majestic, it didn’t condescend to her. He wanted her away now, not to see him in this state, and she royally ignored it.

“Please, let me know if there is anything I can help you at,’ she obtruded instead.

“Thank you, but as you can see, we don’t need to share your noble mammoth’s hauling space,” he pointed out, lifting the rein in his hand. He didn’t need to mirror her faint smile, a shift of his eyebrows was enough to pretend he was feeling the banter.

“I’m sorry for my imperious tone back there,” she said then plainly; clearly it was why she approached in the first place.

“You were right. No more words about it.”

While openly gazing into the other direction, he lazily fumbled through his feelings to find the expected resentment towards her; after all, she did intrude where she had no business. That he found ease to forget it instead made him feel rather more confused than better. Was it him, or was it her? How did she dissipate that one grudge he would have held against her? What was she made of? And her unfaltering look on him: he had a foolish suspicion that she was searching and seeing right through him.

Before she could have opened her mouth to reveal it, however, Fandral’s voice addressed her from nearby. “Fair maiden, I perceived your deeds at this battle to be outstanding as always,” he called.

“Why, thank you,” she responded. “You were quite valorous yourself.”

“You have seen me? Did you behold the flight of that giant after I threw it?”

“If you mean the one you tripped by accidentally falling on that lever, I did indeed.”

“And I saw the way you splendidly pierced several armoured warriors at once,” he returned the mockery with an honest praise, before glancing over at her companion. “And the mirage of that firewolf pack chased hundreds into their own demise as well, Prince. I never saw you make such a grand show on the training grounds.”

Loki smiled. “It’s flattering that you observed. Perhaps if you hadn’t, though, you wouldn’t have needed rescuing from their masses.”

“I agree with that one,” Volstagg said behind them as he caught up on his monstrous stallion. “And if you had time to gape at others, why didn’t you slay some more of the enemy?”

“Don’t compare my abilities to your own limited attention span, you massive dolt,’ Fandral defended. “My arms are never idle even while watching over my friends.”

“Oh, I know that. It’s especially true while safeguarding maidens at home during their baths.

“Help me out here, Hogun,” Fandral called after the missing member in response. “Tell them how you got buried under the mountain of bodies you killed, so I don’t carry the mockery alone.”

“They smelt better than it does around here,” grunted the accused when he rode closer. “Have you soiled your pants while running from Loki’s mirage?”

“Seems like everyone saw it,” Sif told the charmer confidentially.

“All right then,” Fandral sighed. “How about we move over to someone else now? Since Hogun always delights in telling us all off for makeshift reasons, I’d like to promote Loki for his next target.”

“You should know I prefer choosing my own targets,” said the addressed.

“Go ahead, let’s spar,” Loki challenged him unfazed in his merry demeanour.

“Well, Prince, I happen to have a question at hand. Why don’t you tell us why you so rarely unleash such a grand show in dire situations? Is it because you enjoy basking in our downfall, or is it something more personal?”

The sorcerer kept on smirking under the curious gazes, perfectly hiding the delicacy of the topic. “It’s quite entertaining, yes,” he admitted. “But I’m not inclined to share my tactics with you and let you use it against me later, I hope you understand.”

“Naturally. I myself wouldn’t want to share the ways of hiding the faults in my own skills.”

“As would a gallant man never think of asking where those faults originate from.”

Hogun frowned into the sly teal eyes in silence for a mere second before responding. “No, he wouldn’t, as long as it stands first at priorities.”

“I smell a secret,” Fandral hummed seemingly to himself between them.

“There are tons of those everywhere,” Loki reassured him. “Nothing unusual to concern with.”

“Says a passionate collector of them,” Sif blabbed out.

“I just pick them up on our adventures. I reckon it’s not a crime to have eyes and ears.”

“Is that your only purpose with constantly having your brother drag you along?” Volstagg derived.

“Only in one part. It’s also fun to stir things up and increase the challenge for my adventure-craving people. You’re welcome.”

“And there is the leader’s vein,” Hogun pointed out with irony.

“And there,” Sif waved towards Thor’s distant form.

The elder prince was currently occupied with instructing the remaining disheartened homecoming soldiers to keep their spirit despite the blood bath seen: a fresh, young, inexperienced but lifesome would-be king.

Well, he didn’t reek of intestines right now, Loki thought while quietly snorting behind the gazes that turned towards the blond. He was aware that this was an important moment of gaining favours of masses; and he wished he’d been working on it right now, but he couldn’t find the word, the strength, the initiating dynamic to set him out towards this action. There would be plenty of opportunities later, many of them self-induced, he reminded himself while he rested his spine a bit from the straight ride.

“He probably works so hard because he’s eager to forget his first heartbreak,” he noted lightly to dim that shine. “Have you heard?”

“Yeah, it was a fair little lass,” Volstagg responded.

“She left the palace to get married,” Fandral sighed. “And how tall he carried his shame! Not an accidental complaint, not a bitter note!”

“It’s normal to choose love over rank,” Sif let them know. “Thor understood and let her go. That’s not a superpower.”

“Being wise and beautiful as always,” gushed the charmer.

“And very naïve,” Loki added.

Volstagg interrupted the preparing answer harshly: “You can love me as you like, if you can’t cook up a decent feast, you can marry the King of Kings for all I care.”

“Who said she loves you?” Hogun inquired.

“I’m not speaking of the Lady Sif,” snapped the mountain. “I mean the flocks of women that approach me day by day.”

“That’s right,” Fandral agreed laughing before the blatant lie continued. “Such an outstanding woman is meant for someone way above you. I keep wondering why she hasn’t stepped up yet, in fact. I’m pretty sure her target is blind as a bat at these matters unless it smashes him right in the face, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got-“

“My lover is the metal that cuts down our enemies,” she let him know calmly. “And while I don’t concern with anything else for now, I ask you to kindly do the same.”

“I stand corrected, milady,” the charmer admitted bowing his head towards her. “I hope you know I’m only saying this because I believe you deserve the best of the best of your desires, and not a tad bit less.”

Loki resisted bending over his churning stomach. Though his lips craved to remain sealed, he deliberately sought words to cover the sensation.

“Thank you for your misplaced fostering, Fandral,” the maiden smiled. “I’ll be sure to let you know if your expertise is ever needed.”

“Make sure to ask about his way to tell twins apart, too,” Loki added diligently, and he bit his lips with a gasp before his amused smile could have spread.

He shot out with the steed at the same moment Fandral’s anger exploded, leaving the man’s curses and the others’ laughter behind.

That was it, the wind helped him get rid of the nauseating smell. Not heeding his previous company any longer, he urged his beast to keep the pace, getting ahead of the entire army amidst the interested gazes. Perhaps from the fresh air, an idea was already forming in his head: another marvellous prank to await the tired soldiers with, right at the capital’s entrance. If they ever found the entrance, the real one, at all.

An illusion camouflaged him and the steed as an eagle gliding above ground, so his arrival to the capital wouldn’t be known just yet; and under it, a smile tugged on his lips, the colour of his eyes flared up as he warmed into the familiarity of his usual self.

-T-T-T-

The festivity of Jol, or Christmas, as the locals call it, passes as nothing but a few days of excessively crowded streets. The warmaiden's visit afterwards is supposed to be unexpected, she thinks while her steps falter for a moment at the first glance. He's lazing around in a sea of pillows, some behind his back, others propped under his thighs for a comfortable fetal position. A large codex occupies most of the space between his knees and face. The latter is thin and pale; framed by dark locks, jaw-length, wavy and dishevelled; lips perky and skin puffed from a good night’s sleep, teal eyes gazing into a distance even while fixed on the ancient page. He’s a young lad, entirely captivated by the textual content.

“Good morning,” Sif mumbles sheepishly.

She receives an affirmative hum in response, nothing else. She finds the unexplained silence heavy; sits down while observing his idleness, trying to distance herself from the stir in her chest. Nostalgia, of course. The faintest, misplaced hint of longing to reach back into the past that she believes to see through from the centuries' distance, embrace his head and whisper _you stupid idiot, you sad, sad idiot_. Then she realises, with blood rushing into her scarred temple, that the real Loki is probably witnessing her reaction in silence behind the view, his malicious amusement clear in her imagination. Yes. That picture is good enough to cool her down and lend nonchalance to her expression, so she holds onto it.

“Am I interrupting some private scheming?” she asks.

Another minute passes before the answer.

“In all honesty, I’m just gaping at my incredible memory span. Listen to this,” he says and pulls a middle finger along the lines he seems to be reading. “ _The bane wasp is, in fact, not an insect; only because of its outer features, and so on, and so on… This medium sized, four-legged beast has an average wingspan of six feet and five inches, body length four feet and nine inches, weight three hundred pounds… Its forking abdomen’s pair of stingers, with a length of eight inches and a diameter of two, emit venom capable of causing partial paralysis and excruciating pain to a spitetaur, while instantly killing any smaller creature. Furthermore, the bane wasp is responsible for two fifths of_ -”

“You’re just making this up,” Sif cuts in impatiently.

“No, I’m not. I’m reciting. Why are you being so cynical?”

“Even if I was interested, I couldn’t check for proof any more, Loki.” She startles for a moment; it feels like she had mistakenly used a name to address the past figure instead of the current prisoner, as if it was a different person and she had dumbly mixed it up; as if _Loki_ and _Loki_ had been two different names, too.

His lenient shrug and immersion back into the book lasts but a few seconds before Sif interrupts his fancied play. "I believe you have a debt to settle with the Director."

“What’s with him nowadays?" he inquires, apparently speaking to the folio. "He hasn’t come for a while. Is he a coward to face me after his blunder?”

“Blunder?”

“Or was it purposeful?” he looks up at her now with the clearest interest in wide eyes and light tone. “Did he send you to your demise in the belief that I’d bow to him afterwards?”

“You’re too wise to honestly believe that.”

“Didn’t he ask you to do it?”

She suppresses the urge to swallow under the intent gaze, it could go misunderstood. “He asked for no such favour, naturally.”

The wound is still seeping into the white fabrics doctors covered it up with. It throbs dully, occasionally peaks in a sudden, sharp twinge that she now makes extra effort to keep from her expression, although the expectant stare is blissfully away, hung over the boy’s lap.

“He’s been busy,” she lets him know to fill the silence she feels traitorous; “he hasn’t seen me lately either.”

“What an ungrateful gnat,” he spits. “If I were the ruler of his country, I’d have him skinned for hiding as soon as unpleasantries came up.”

“He’s not hiding, there are other-”

“He’s a rat!” Loki’s fist collides with the book sharply, and the movement wobbles the entire pillow fort; his young frown and the curve of his lips tell of the naivest scorn. “He abandons his own servant in the deepest of trouble.”

“Servant?” she hisses, taking a step closer as if she could trespass the wall at will. “Don’t you dare-”

“You are doing his bidding even now!” the boy snaps.

“Because we bear the same purpose. It’s not servitude, it’s my aid I’m lending these humans.”

“At the cost of your health, your life! You’re wasting yourself away for these insects!”

She frowns, halting in the dispute suddenly. “What are you doing? You’re not being yourself.” He’s being his young self from aeons ago. “Why are you acting a child?”

“Why, it _is_ imperfection that you missed seeing in me, isn’t it?” Loki asks while morosely stuffing fugitive pillows back under him to support his uphold.

“Still, why like this?”

His lips clench into a tight line in firm refusal to explain himself. She finds herself gritting her teeth in irritation against the obnoxious teenage resistance. And why in Odin’s name is she reacting to this façade?

“Well, at imperfection, your expertise has quite a lack,” she notes in revenge.

“Does it?” The smile extends from his lips to the shining in his eyes, but it’s only a thin veil over a pit of resentment.

Sif doesn’t respond. Then, with his slender shoulder leaning to the pillow wall, Loki breaks the silence like they were in the middle of a laid-back conversation: “Were they worthy of your sacrifice?”

“They all live, don’t speak about them in past.”

"Are they well, too?"

"I don't know."

He smirks. "They're not even friends..." Scorn failed to be hidden by respect.

"Was Jane Foster your friend?" she inquires.

He stares at her seemingly to ascertain what she's really talking about, which surprises her: it can’t be that much out of place, Thor reciting his dead brother's single kind deed to anyone inclined to listen.

"She was part of the deal,” he admits faintly. “The centre of the entire mission. Don’t ever think Thor was fighting to save the world.”

“And is fighting to save someone dear less heroic?”

“Is that what you did? Save someone dear?”

She frowns for a moment as she imagines demand in the calmly uttered question. Then she remembers how useful this information could be to the trickster that strives to find a way out of here. The latter lightens her chest oddly.

“I helped someone in need of it, that’s all. Not worth a breath,” she admits, gloating inwardly for sending another word of his own back at him. The stare she receives is clear like the sunlit oceans, not astonished enough to be solvable.

“Were they all humans?” comes the question that she has the mind to leave unanswered again.

“I didn’t see any other way.” She sighs instead, deep and long, her look back on the ground. “This wound is nothing compared to the damage befalling on them without my presence. I am tougher, I can handle such trials. The true problem is, I can’t do my job like this. My last chance to seize the opponent is coming up soon. And I’m like this. I messed up on my own, not at Fury’s request, because I’m a blockhead. If I seem spiteful, it’s nothing personal, I want to slice anyone’s throat right now.”

“And your pleading, is that personal, or was it an order to name your conditions?”

“They’re not my conditions,” she claims, her throat dry as she repeats: “I’m not afraid. It's Fury who believes my state could affect your lenience.”

“So you _are_ a tool then.”

The resentment she doesn’t care to hide from her look meets eyes of mockingly open wonder. She doesn’t find words to save her dignity, so she chooses scornful silence instead. Then, the fruitless debate at an end, she makes her way to the door from the suffocating air. She hears the rustle behind her as Loki shifts. His young voice rings hard, formal.

“And now the purpose of your visit before your insulted, and much rightful, retreat. Yes, I got the manuscript. Ask away.”

“I’m not asking, actually,” Sif breathes before her silence would reveal her hesitation to turn around. “You’ll give the information that you know we need.”

“ _We_ , now?”

Her eyes close for a moment in regret over the slip of her tongue, before she looks at him, still among the pillows; her posture is firmed.

“What happened in Helheim?”

The smile in the corner of his lips is a mere side matter, acknowledgement of some triumph he imagines. He cannot suspect, after all, how eager the warmaiden is to know he doesn't belong to the land of conquered evils.

“That’s not really what Fury wants you to ask, is it?” he suggests.

“Could be,” she replies, her look on his face unfaltering, expectant, unwilling to play around.

Young Loki clambers out from under the cover and sits onto the edge of the bed barefooted, two hands combing his locks back, and they obey the touch as if magic-infused, lying tightly against his skull. “He wants you to ask what this is, and honestly, I myself see more use to it, too.”

The blanket he flaps back reveals a patch of the original cell, and the historical treasure crumpled into a tight ball, with a little green sprout growing on top. He takes it into his lap in the nest of his hands, gazing at her expectantly.

“You asked for that linen just to destroy it?” she frowns.

His eyes close like his patience is tested. “No. I used it, as you see. This plant has grown out of it.”

“They’ll still make you pay for it, I’m sure.”

“And much wrongfully. This sheet is worthless for their historians.”

She stares at the orb because she finds the confidence in those young teal eyes uncharacteristically heavy. “What is that plant then?” she mutters.

“An object of barter. I’d like to exchange it for my freedom later. For now, it’s highly dependent on me: feel free to take it as a hint.”

She refuses to delve into the discovery that Loki is unwilling to yield in exchange of her well-being; it isn't personal, it’s a battle of dominance against Fury. Loki knows better than anyone here that she can't be brought down easily, and Sif has known from the start he won’t accept this deal. Although she conveys the message back and forth, she isn't part of the conversation.

“What makes you think humans will need that?” she inquires for the Director. For a successful compromise in the misty future. For Loki.

“It isn't certain yet. Perhaps it’ll be able to cure cancer. Or consuming a bud will provide nourishment for an entire month. If fortune isn’t on my side, it’ll be just some bitter weed for a restless stomach. Who knows what grows out of it?”

He’s bluffing.

She knows it instantly. That she’s silent about this fact later on accounts to the lack of proof in his impeccable body language, and not to the foolish sentiment that’s behind her eyes as she affords one last glance at the boy from the past (seeing her gesture very well and rewarding it with an impish smile) before she’d leave the room.


	6. Chapter 6

-o-O-o-

She was weeping from the depth of her heart, and much rightfully: her entire left side must have been numb and crawling with pain by now, further agitated as her skin tore up along the gush. Loki pressed soothing words through his clenched jaw, as if speaking to himself, while he directed his defiant seidr onto her injured side through hands trembling from exhaustion. It wasn’t going well, he himself was upset, and the irritation in her slurred curses only added to it.

Barely an hour ago, she’d asked him to shapeshift.

The two of them had been surrounded by the enemy, cut off from Thor’s entourage of the time, with only one way out: down the cliff crumbling at their heels. All because a warrior never lost his sword, and especially not Sif, whose blade was a gift from a crude moron. The wish to honour that undeserving fellowship made her blind to the dangers awaiting in the village of these humanoid hyenas, and deaf to Loki repeatedly hissing her name, as he snuck after her behind the scarcely lit hay shacks, leaving the rest of the group waiting for them in hiding. Loki expected to bring back the obnoxious maiden within the first mile. Contrary to that, they ended up right behind the central hut with her grabbing the sword and quickly sniffed out by twitching Redhound noses passing by.

“Can’t you?”

Of course he could transform, he excelled at it, she’d also seen it before – he used this ability on the training grounds with clever timing to impress. Combining it with illusions made his powers appear limitless.

The reason he hesitated now was that they weren’t. None of the trainees knew that a sorcerer could only transform successfully into something that was related to him in a way; and Loki didn’t affiliate with majestic creatures of the sky. He bit his lips while brooding, a hesitant hum escaped his throat at Sif’s repeated urging, but he was bent on keeping his face before her. So when the stirred creatures howled to signal a joint attack, he transformed while turning towards the green-covered depth; he was already leaping off by the time he felt her weight hold onto him.

His cleared vision grasped every inch of the rapidly spinning world around them. Sounds throbbed thickly in his ears, he identified them as Sif’s voice inquiring about he hell of his intentions. Which definitely didn’t involve the vertical plunge they were experiencing. He spread leathery wings against the roaring air; he _heard_ light bones crunch from the pressure while he strained those vain muscles to hold out. He should have figured out earlier that the easy-looking grace of flying required incredible lifting power against friction. A graceful flight was now a distant mirage: the effort to glide, or fall at a bearable speed, took up his strength. His rider – one he was never ever going to tell anyone about – was desperate to hold on and persistent in finding out what he was thinking to himself.

A blast of wind twisted his wings out with ease, sending them into a somersault, and then into the foliage below them. He rocketed through the branches with shaky wings spread again, this time horizontally but barely navigating, until his body grazed the ground and he released the shapeshifted form without warning, causing them to tumble on separately.

The maiden’s continuing ramble hummed dully in his head, and then he evaded an attack, rather sensed than seen, before he knew it. With pain jolting through his chest at each movement, he clambered to his feet and staggered towards Sif’s blurred outlines.

She was covered in blood, his limbs grew cold for a moment at the sight. But then he tried to recall if she had looked the same before – from Hound blood, not her own, – and without remembering, the idea itself calmed him a bit. The chill took time leaving him.

As the ringing in his ears died down, replaced by some eerie buzzing, Sif’s message got clearer: _we’ll take them on and cut our way through_.

Right. Back into the present, daggers in hand, he assessed the situation.

“We’re not taking anything on,” he then informed the maiden with her back at his. “We’re out of here at this instant.”

The increasing number of creatures around them had a rather misfortunate shape. They floated three feet above the ground, about the highest altitude they were able to reach without special effort. Bodies lined with black and blacker stripes. Four triple-jointed limbs, wings of thin leather. Very thin waist line. Top half covered in coarse fur, bottom half shining dully with fine scales.

“Look around, there is no other way out,” Sif informed him. “I’ll lead and you defend the rear.”

“It’s a very faulty plan in this situation.”

“Fine, then why don’t you sit back to forge something better while we’re slowly killed?” she snapped, and her double blade sliced an offending insect-like creature into two precisely at the slender waist. No inner fluids emerged. The two halves crawled towards her; one blade poured dark blood out of the front and the other of the back as she spun her weapon around. She reeled backwards hastily as a bunch of other beasts swooped down on the corpse, covering both pieces entirely: the kin-blood crazed them into a feeding frenzy.

“Don’t touch that mucus, the scent will be picked up,” Loki warned her while he kicked a creature back on the route it came from.

“You mean besides the stink I’m wearing now?” What he perceived in the maiden’s forcibly softened tone made the light mocking intent appear out-of-place.

“This is the Hounds’ farm,” Loki explained instead of analysing it. “They keep the beasts under control, and those help them hunt. They live in a symbiosis. We may well need to rely on stealth, but the scent of this venom leads the Hounds from dozens of miles away.”

Sif turned towards him in a short break. “Help me out here, because I don’t see the solution in your lecture.”

“Well,” he said between two breaths, not quite understanding but mightily angered by her rage; “in your words, it might be this: avoid your feats of strength for once, and focus on escaping, Sif. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I could have done that well on my own! Why the hell did you come after me?” she yelled back.

“You’ve been overpowered!”

“It would all have been fine!”

“You just asked for my help to get away!”

“And how come we’re not away then? Teleport us out of here, genius! Or would we end up on a foreign planet?”

So she knew what had really happened, and that burned.

“How about you use your head instead and make a sensible decision for once?” he inquired of her back after she tuned to the assaulting beasts.

“These are just pets, how could I think they have it in them to challenge me?” she fumed while hitting the opponents with the handle of her sword one by one, apparently careless about the changing subject of her rage.

That should have reassured Loki, but he perceived the lady more into fighting than running, despite the hard facts just shared, and while he continued the stationary defence, he wished direly to smash her head into a rock rather than letting her run into her own demise. Yes, Sif had been especially crazy like that since she got a taste from triumph in Thor’s gang. That comely oaf made these guys believe they were meant for glory like Loki and Thor were. Could it be possible that the source of her irritation was embarrassment? Over what? Or who?

He quit musing further; he also had to admit there was no other way than to face the beasts. Not even he could have hidden from the centre of attention now, but he couldn’t produce a spark of magic either for the moment: the failure, her clear perception of it numbed his mind. He needed a minute to set things right inside before calling upon those inner powers.

But instead, he caught sight of a wasp dipping its double stinger into her soft side from behind.

A whip of his arm immediately threw a dagger that way; with his attention momentarily pinpointing that one occurrence, he saw the bulk of venom throb through the stingers as it was injected into her flesh. She yelped before the knife arrived and the sharp organs were torn out of the abdomen by the impact. The wasp fell back with a monstrous whine; Loki was at the maiden’s side by then, twisting the remains out of her – delicacy didn’t matter now. While the other beasts were busy consuming their injured kin, he rapidly stabbed a few more with both hands to increase diversion. Then he put her arm around his neck, and grabbing a handful of her clothing, he ran, dragging her along roughly, not caring if she was yelling something sensible at him or not; he was shaking from fury at her now, he believed, for making it even worse than he had and not even showing the remorse he felt.

The diversion triggered a chain of mass cannibalism, which helped them break out of the hub unharmed. In a minute, the wild buzzing quieted into the distance, replaced by the heavy, asynchronous thuds of their laboured jog through the shrubbery.

“Heal the stab,” she breathed faintly into their silence.

“The wound is minor,” he muttered.

“Are you vengeful?” she asked softly, as if shy, and it drew his look to her.

“Your pain isn’t from the wound, it would remain anyway.” He preferred no further explanation.

As he deemed it wiser to stay close to the village and Thor’s team, he stopped and let the limping body down in the crook of a moss-covered, thickety slope, which hid their sight from possible pursuers from the direction of the cliff they had so gracelessly descended. He knelt and sought to slow the throbbing in his temple.

He suspected that the Redhounds had discovered the ruin of the nest and were on their scented trail by now. When they got here, it was the two of them awaiting, and no one else. At this spot, there was a reasonable chance that the rest of their group would notice the ruckus in the silence of the night and head this way, but it would take time, most likely too long. That left Loki in charge, he didn’t need to look or feel around to know she would stay out of it, and his soul chilled as he faced the fact, not from the upcoming challenge but from her out-of-ordinary passivity.

“Stop the bleeding. It’s peculiar,” she muttered with eyes closed. “My body won’t move well, I can’t fight like this.”

“You won’t have to,” he replied. She wouldn’t be able to, he meant.

“Don’t be foolish, you said they’ll find us. We’ve just fought them, our entire group was no match.”

“Well, we have no other choice than having you trust me now,” Loki answered lightly, while his heart sank with each breaking twig nearby, contrary to his aim. There was no time left for now to tend to the poisoned. He could sense the approaching horde creep through the wood at once; then sniffling, real or imagined, hit his ears. The pack couldn’t be defeated physically, but magic was still on his side, he reasoned with himself. He browsed through the spells he knew to work, but his mind kept ticking to the monotonous rhythm of seconds.

_She’s dying, she’ll die, she’s gone,_ it chanted instead of the tactical moves he was seeking, and his jaw clenched in an effort to ignore it.

The spells, he demanded, the power mostly used for battling fiends and oafs, which corner of his spirit were they sleeping at? ( _She’s poisoned._ ) Or some hoax then: an outnumbering mass could be guided, too, with a well established row of tricks. The options were abundant, the approaching horde could be intimidated, misguided, or straightaway goaded into chasing a mirage. ( _a length of eight inches and a diameter of two_ ) Priority was essential, it’s where all tactics started.

Creeping noiselessly, he positioned himself farther away from the faintly heaving Sif: if they targeted him, she wouldn’t be in immediate danger; and if they chose her, he could land a surprise attack. It could well end up being a piece of cake, he had plenty of seconds to sketch out the plan.

( _the land of gods has lasting inhabitants, she endures more than general beings_ ) Well, it wasn’t a fully elaborated plan, but he did have a long term intention with annoying the beasts as the first humanoid carnivores broke through the nearby bush and followed the scent of the numbing poison in the maiden’s blood. ( _See her off._ ) The teal flash from his hand exploded, throwing the dark figures squealing into all directions, but it didn’t kill any. His head still wasn’t in the right place for sufficient resistance. While fully aware of his foolishness, he leapt out of his hiding and stabbed the closest Hound in the chest; it practically waited for him to do that, preoccupied with locating the scented prey. ( _venom capable of causing partial paralysis and excruciating pain to a spitetaur_ ) Loki received the following attacks with routine, spinning and bending, kneeling, sliding and being nimble, cutting flesh open with each lash of his arm. Rather than staying in place, he danced around the self-proclaimed battle field, to keep the attention of all creatures pouring onto the slope, but also to avoid getting overwhelmed. These slender, furry bodies were sneakier than the bulky warrior trainees or heavily armoured soldiers of enemy lands, they didn’t have the superfluous weight during movement that could have been used against them. ( _five hundred pounds partially paralysed then two hundred full body lungs heart brain no no no then with an Aesir’s recovery-_ ) His need for an illusion increased as air seeped only greedily into his lungs, and his solitude against the growing pack stood out more and more. ( _See her off._ ) “Hey!” he heard himself bark dumbly at the three hyenas that were more interested in the crouching, unmoving Sif than in him. He fought his way towards them, but he couldn’t tell how long it took to slice the throat inhaling the scent of her hair. Seconds or years could have passed by the time he kneed another one in the back, feeling the spine crack and hearing an unearthly squeal. His look missed the collapsing body as he turned to the next opponent, now idling in one place, defending the spot. The scent of closeness dazed them, making them easier kills. He needed to shapeshift ( _help is back up there getting around five miles a ten-minute full speed gallop_ ) or an illusion. ( _banewasp venom multiplies within a foreign body DNA conversion rate-_ ) At least an illusion. An attack, a real attack would have come handy, but he was restricted to throwing knives, slashing throats open with newly produced ones while those zipped into skulls and shoulders. His own shoulders were sore and he refrained from calling for Sif to see if she was ( _alive_ ) awake. ( _Aesir healing cell replacement speed blood travels in battle fever twenty per second from waist area reaches heart in-_ ) Telekinesis, please he had left that area untouched so far, but now he needed his thrown knives back. He gathered them up manually in momentary breaks as he hissed curses under heavy breaths. He received his first serious blow around that time: he’d been more than glad to slow down for a moment when the creatures grew scarcer. His freshly recovered knife ran into the eye of the hyena that had dipped its fangs into his leg while he kicked another one in the chest. His inner ears heard the teeth sink into the bone before the hold loosened up and the corpse rolled away, leaving nothing but numbness behind. He appreciated the lack of pain; during a spin, he glanced towards the maiden again to see there was no unwanted attention. ( _twenty percent of venom eliminated per inch so effective scatter speed is-_ ) He burned to know if she was able to defend herself. Then again, if she had been, she would be waltzing around here taking lives, with her blood pouring infinitely onto the mossy ground. ( _five minutes five minutes five minutes five minutes_ ) He shook his head wildly like he was getting rid of liquid drops (which he was, alas), and he fought on. It continued endlessly, but he wasn’t endless, and she wasn’t endless, there had to be another way to stop this, some way to drive their masses away instantly. What did he have around? ( _five minutes five minutes five minutes four_ ) He had trees, rocks, earth, bushes, sky, fur, sweat, blood, claws, knives, howls, his tongue, all useless, useless. He had sorcery but in hiding, he didn’t have his sanity, he needed to slow down and set his mind right, where had he left his meat shield? ( _four minutes four minutes four minutes three_ ) Forgetting his nimble swirl, he shot blindly at the Hounds that were surrounding the maiden, he had missed them during the void plotting. On the way, he jumped and stepped over one, as if they had agreed on serving as stepping stones for faster travel, he was really being foolish. While still in the air, he bent backwards and let a creature fly over him. Air rushed out of his lungs as the one below used the opportunity to land a fist in the middle of his back. The open pose tempted two others to launch at his stomach, sending him to the ground from the height, crushing the misfortunate being under the weight of him and the two offenders. Although a pair of knives instantly sliced open their abdomens, their twitching corpses were quickly topped by several other Hounds, mostly failing to reach the suffocating prince himself, as they kept slipping uncontrollably in the fresh puddle of intestines all over their target’s midriff. ( _two minutes two minutes-_ ) Norns, she was up; at least her snarl at the timidly approaching beasts promised that she would get up and slaughter the horde at the next moment. However, she didn’t move in the end, her right elbow struggled to push her away from her support, and the left hand hung loosely over the double blade lying at her knees. Under the angered pile, Loki could see the grin spreading on the beastly faces with their growing certainty of the failing resistance.

That triggered something that appeared horrid at the moment, but looking back later, it seemed like a rather fortunate turn. Because something loud rose in Loki’s place at his desperate attempt to get rid of the hindrances; something large and black. It was more convenient to be called shapeless than anything specific, even though it had a thousand shapes at once and constantly changing, roaring here and hissing there and fluid and airy and firm and soft and feathery and scaly at once, in wild attack mode, melting into an ever-moving circle around Sif, towering over the beasts and ceaselessly fending off their attacks while she covered her head with her better arm to protect it from the acid spluttering in all directions, injuring the monstrous bodies, gradually consuming the stubborn ones that wouldn’t back off.

And the beasts smelled the kind of fear that inverted the two instinctual desires of survival and harming, placing the latter before the other. ( _What about love, isn’t that an instinctual desire_ , young Thor had inquired when they were being instructed on the Physiology of War together. _It could be, Your Highness, but it isn’t proven, and certainly not dispensed in battle_ , was the answer.) The creature drove the opponents into a retreat, but there was no cowardice in their lowered postures as the horde backed out at once without any verbal command; they drew back into the surrounding thicket, tough they weren’t gone just yet.

Loki let the magic drop like a disgusting veil, groaning as his ever-changing perception settled into his Aesir one and stopped tearing at his brain. Panting, with slippery palms and feet hesitantly lifting him, an aching leg dragged behind, he clambered up towards the semi-conscious, trembling body; his face expressionless, but his eyes still wide and distant from the tardily dissipating fervour. They were closed by the time he placed a palm flat on the maiden’s sobbing abdomen near the wound, causing her to jump weakly. He bit his lips to stop them from silently praying, praying never helped: control did.

He felt up the muscle under his palm: rigid from the incision, twitching through the metal-scaled shirt at scarcely taken, short breaths. He had no means to tell the state of the organs, and he abhorred from the idea of guessing blindly. All he managed to do was breathe slow and deep, and will her breaths to follow.

That seemed to help him, miraculously: the quiet, sulking growls nearby drew further back within the field of his attention. But he was still powerless against the venom running in those veins.

When he felt ready, he endeavoured to heal the wound, for a start. The result lasted a mere second, and even before he finished, she gritted her teeth as her flesh tore up again on its own, purple mucus seeping through. It sent him into another spiral of desperation: the wound wouldn’t heal, the bleeding wouldn’t be stopped, he wasn’t good enough, he would fail, he would fail her. She wept along with his soul. He whispered calming words to her in a voice eerily foreign: it reached his own ears as if someone unimportant, some dying peasant, had sought to comfort _him_ about the threat of the irreversible.

His energy wafted around on its own; though he couldn’t have shaped it right now, he felt its raw stream flow into her through his palm as he wanted, and then separate from him. Perhaps it dissolved in her helpfully, perhaps it went into waste, his mind couldn’t follow and he hesitated in the desire to find out. This sensation was a first, and he only deciphered it after the energy had been flowing out of him like this for a while. He was letting go of his seidr so the other body, not his, could handle it on its own as deemed necessary. And he hated it from the first moment, it daunted him: the possibility that someone who wasn’t a sorcerer couldn’t use this kind of aid the right way.

Regardless, her breathing evened out after a while, and though she didn’t move, he suspected that she was conscious. With the beasts all around in angered fear of him that promised to cease at any moment, he was in a hurry to wind a tight bond around her waist by the time she spoke up. “Heal the wound,” she commanded faintly while sitting up; her slurred voice indicated she needed more time to recover fully, but the tone didn’t account for resistance.

“You’ll have to stick with it for now,” he told her while eyeing the surroundings.

“Loki, I need to defend myself at least!” Her snap echoed around in the foliage, and some careful yaps responded to it nearby. “Can you not tell the direness you made us face? You’re willing to get us killed, for something you perhaps define as fun? It is long time to stop such hideous pranks!”

Her rigour caught him off-guard in his exhaustion. “No, what _you_ did was hideous!” he snapped back without thinking, his voice coarse and full and unrestrained like never before, his eyes huge and dark like venom. “Have you learned nothing at training? Know when to retreat!”

“Retreat is only a word for slithery coward, not for a brave warrior!”

“You’re not brave, Sif, you’re a moron!” he yelled back. “You’re foolhardy! You do not work your way towards glory, you blindly rush into anything that growls and think yourself grand for it! You’re not! This is not how you protect the King!” He thought of Mother’s words and they flared, scorched in him now, he defied them with fervour over her preparing retort. “You’ll never be honoured the task, Sif! Because you know what’s an essential element of it? Humility! Erasing your own self and acknowledging that the rise of someone else is more important than yours! Can you do that, Sif? Can you ever do that?”

“You are not to talk to me about humility!”

“You’re a clown, a performer, that’s what you are!” he spat, heedless of her words. “You’re all clowns, self-loving buffoons!”

Meanwhile, he noted pain returning to her torso: her bent posture revealed it.

“What are you then?” she hissed, though weaker than before.

“Your future king, _soldier_ ,” he barked into her face.

Then, biting his lips to suppress the pain, he clambered up to face the upcoming battle.

“Pray, do something with this cursed wound, Your Majesty,” she pressed through the rapidly increasing pain, which suppressed her intended sarcasm. “Heed my words, it’s truly bothersome. It’s not my pride. Together, we could hold them off, but now I can’t even lift my sword.”

( _three minutes-_ )

“The venom is what pains you, not the wound,” he said. “I have nothing to fight that with.”

“No matter. I just want the wound gone, Loki, I swear to you, I can handle the pain-“

“I am not a healer!” the yell burst out of him unprepared.

( _three minutes three minutes three minutes two_ )

He couldn’t find the words to explain to her that it hadn’t worked, that he needed his powers to mend the internal damage instead of the stab because she was dying. Like he stopped comprehending it before it reached his lips.

The Hound his look interlocked with launched forward, but Loki was close enough to slice its body open with a single strike at once, and it made the rest of the pack stop on their tracks. It reminded them of the _thing_. The idle snarling continued, and faint hope flickered up in the sorcerer that this time would drag out just enough.

He took slow, limping steps backwards and knelt down beside Sif. One hand holding the dagger dripping onto his wrist, the other reached for her stomach wordlessly.

“It truly hurts, Loki,” she breathed through shivering while he released his energy. Her tone, the confession foreign on her lips felt like the numbing poison had crept over into him; but he focused on the fresh chance they had to last, and that her body needed the energy he was sharing.

“Use this for now if you have to,” he said afterwards, placing the stained knife with multiple shaped blades into her lap.

She held it up between her fingers.

“I can do nothing with this but poke eyeballs.”

“Oh, can’t you?” he snorted, surprised at her denial. He did hear about her practicing the same battle art as him, although all on her own. “I think you know exactly how to use it well.”

She might or might not have understood what he meant, her reproach never revealed it. “I’m eternally clumsy with small weapons. This ridiculous little thing is not what I could take lives with,” she pointed out firmly, pushing the blade back against his chest.

Loki grabbed it within a breath and thrust it under her belt on her sensitive side, causing her to suppress a yelp and glare at him to protest. Venom, the shades playing in his eyes were green like boiling venom this time as he returned the look without a hint of a smile in it. And it made her remain silent and turn back to her own anguish instead.

And Loki relished her lack of retort. He stood a few feet away, breathing in deep as he felt the change in himself. Yes… Anger cleared his mind. It aided him at calling forth the powers needed. That’s how he was finally able to create a mirage, the grandest yet, to his mind, though not so much in reality. It was a mere bunch of figures, Thor and his precious friends, scattered all around the field, apparently fearing their perceived task.

The increasing growls showed that the Redhounds also found the newcomers’ presence uninvited. At the launch of their joint attack, the figures ran form the beasts in startled fervour, with unveiled screams and a superfluous amount of movement. The aim was to keep the Hounds’ attention on them instead of Sif or Loki; the ruckus of sound and sight was to guide attention away from the scent of the real flesh and sweat.

The illusionary cowards lead most of the pack to the other end of the field, away from them. Loki took down the remaining few with throwing knives, then limped from corpse to corpse casually to gather the blades again. He crouched down among the tattered bushes halfway between the maiden and the battle scene, and watched grinning how the group stumbled around, his heart dripping with anger-filled joy.

And soon, the real group stood by the field of ravaged flora, marvelling at their own cowardice in insulted bafflement. They could observe Thor throwing one of his heavy swords towards his attacker with an astonished yelp, but of course missing by a mile; the mirage couldn’t touch, after all. Fandral caused several Hounds to crash into a tree in a row during his zigzag-run, Hogun tangled into the chain of his spiked weapon and fell over, causing his closest pursuers to pile up on each other as momentum dragged them on; Volstagg had trouble carrying his weight but he always tumbled away from danger at the last moment. The illusionary figures were excessively fortunate and nimble, the beasts got further enraged by their jaws constantly snatching at thin air when they’d thought they finally got a grasp.

And as the Asgardians detected Loki’s figure behind the scene, weathered and covered in drying goo of the least advantageous shade, Loki returned their stare, his smile impish, his eyes steely under his dark eyebrows.

While Thor’s reinforcement took over and beat back the preoccupied beasts, he stood up and trod back to the unconscious Sif, guiding his powers into her once again. He blocked out the sounds as the others crowded up around them; some went furious at the lady’s torn sight, but others held them back to let the sorcerer work. He closed his eyes deliberately heedless, letting them settle it among themselves.

“I’m all right, let us hurry,” were her first words as she stirred, somewhat faint but firmly rejecting any concerned questions and notes while she clambered to her feet.

“I’ll lead the way to the portal,” Thor offered, like it was him that had presented the secret passage at the beginning, and they ran into the newly forming circle of aggravated Hounds, Loki close behind them but avoiding to fight as much as possible, not explaining.

Their progress through the forest was interrupted several times so he could heal the maiden, but no one asked about it for now; perhaps they weren’t such fools, after all, and they understood what was going on, or they knew it wasn’t the time for discussions. It didn’t really matter, the greater problem was the difficulty of protecting the more and more dazed Sif. She would mutter that she could keep up with them even if they paid full attention to the lurking Hounds, but they recorded her stumble repeatedly while fending for herself, falling on one knee or hunching over, momentarily disoriented but still fighting on, stubborn as she was.

They were close to the edge of the forest when Loki’s suspicion melted into conviction at last, that it wasn’t the unusual rate of blood loss but the venom itself, although she would no longer address the new sensation cutting into her. It struck him like lightning: there weren’t five minutes any more, he had healed the organs but the venom hadn’t dissipated. Even if the damage it caused was cured regularly, the toxin itself spread unaffected, and it destroyed her on a larger scale each time.

What were the right countermeasures for that?

He could catch her falling body because he was already approaching her with long steps by the time she lost consciousness for good.

“Can’t we go any faster?” he raised his voice to reach the other members of the group battling the last few humanoid beasts still at their heels.

“It’s up to you, Loki,” Fandral responded. “Whatever you’re doing, you better do it quicker, or we’ll stay here till next year.”

He was right, naturally, and Loki felt like _he_ was missing the redeeming solution. _No hope_ was out of question; so what was escaping his mind this time? How could he stabilise her condition? After the destruction reached the brain, what then? Was he to think now or leave all for later and run to reach home sooner?

He needed but also dreaded the attention of the others, the possibility of losing Sif and it being his fault, and them all seeing him fail her.

“We must hurry on!” he insisted on that one clear point.

“Agreed,” said Volstagg. “Get up and let’s go!”

Loki shook his head, however embarrassing it felt; he could have scooped her up in his arms but he couldn’t have healed her while running.

“Come on, we’ll find something to carry them,” Fandral decided, prompting all to rummage through the surrounding corpses for the right tools.

“Wait, don’t scatter!” Hogun barked, and his look pointed upwards.

Though it was the first time witnessed in person, they quickly identified the growing light on the night sky.

The Bifrost.

It reached them unprepared, the blast took them away like the vilest flood. Blood hesitated to return to their limbs after arrival in the round hall.

“Gatekeeper, we have urgent need of the healers,” Thor announced as greeting.

“They are on the way,” said the man while walking over to the exit without a glance at them, and leaning on his sword, he fixed his gaze on the distant palace. “My name is Heimdall.”

“Your aid was well timed.”

Volstagg grunted at that. “I would’ve gone with extremely late, but suit yourself.”

“The fate of young twits like you isn’t my concern, heir or not,” Heimdall informed them calmly.

“You’d let your future king die, even though you could help him?” snapped the bulkiest warrior.

“If he can’t take care of himself then he isn’t meant to take care of a nation. But don’t misunderstand, I bear no ill-will towards you. I deemed you in need of an escape just this once.”

“So you do see everything?” Thor inquired.

“I do.”

Loki felt, or imagined, pearls of cold sweat on his temple as his look met the man’s golden orbs. Again, part of it was likely the fatigue that gnawed at him since he redrew into the corner with the maiden in his arms, and he let his seidr flow into her ceaselessly, afraid that stopping would have dire consequences. But his energy was limited, he felt this clearer now than any other times.

“How come you didn’t help us sooner then?” Hogun wished to know meanwhile.

“As I said, your perils are not my concern, unless they affect Asgard’s fate. My job is to keep out unwanted beings, and that involves the monsters you fight on your nightly adventures. As long as they’re near you, I can but watch you perish.”

Loki barely heard the last words, they bounced around in his skull as if in free space. Less and less things reached his consciousness, in fact, and he struggled to keep focused on the sole task of guiding his energy through his palm, into Sif’s forehead that he was holding up feebly. Like a tub of paste squeezed dry, he felt flat and airless, his muscles were slowly turning into stone: too soon, he was becoming helpless, useless to the single person he was bent on keeping here.

At one point of the crawling time, Thor embraced their forms together, without an explanation. He was surprisingly large and warm, it seemed easy for him to engulf both of them; his breathing long and spacious, his unsounding voice deep: it made everything else a tad softer, helped Loki’s task crystallise in the centre of his thoughts. An arm of his around the sorcerer, a hand holding onto his forearm around Sif’s waist. The other arm a barrier between the world and Sif herself. Loki remembered his embrace to be smaller, thinner.

He wondered if Thor had some unseen feelings for the lady, perhaps only realised now that she was-

A shudder ran through the younger prince at the thought that by failing her, he might fail both of them. A kind of panic he couldn’t afford at this crucial minute.

“Where are they?” the question, in a dismayingly thin voice, escaped his lips.

“Coming, brother. All is fine now.”

“Nothing is, there is no time.”

“It’s all right. She’ll be fine, we’re home.”

Oh, foolish, naïve, gullible, ever-optimistic Thor, that’s not how it worked. These minutes of waiting, with the three other men idling nervously and Heimdall staring across the bridge towards the palace, were longer than a millennium for her, and him.

When the healers finally lifted Sif out of his hands, he found himself in a suffocating hold of the bulky arms. He waited until the numbness left his limbs, then he pushed against it in vain for a few seconds, until he found his voice. “Thor, I’m fine,” he snapped into the muffling shoulder.

With his head in an imperious clasp of the hands, he glared back at his brother’s paled face and the intense flare of the blue orbs. And then the moment was washed away by the blond’s unfitting smile spreading like a sunshiny afternoon. “We made it,” he cheered while stepping back.

“You can’t be sure,” Loki warned while straightening his clothes, his back leaning to a column against dizziness.

“ _You_ should be. You saved her.”

“I didn’t,” he hissed with a sudden impulse of anger, like an unasked burden had just been placed on his shoulders.

“And when we’re on topic, what exactly _did_ you do, if I may ask?” Fandral inquired.

The sorcerer wished he wouldn’t have to answer, but his mind was too drained for an effective excuse, and he abhorred from facing the topic later on just as much as delving into it now. “Mischief gone haywire,” he mumbled what he thought would satisfy them the fastest.

“How exactly?” Thor asked sternly; he was ready for another attempt to make Loki remedy his ways.

“However you prefer, brother. You know me well enough, guess it and let me retreat for now.”

“All right, I know you need your rest as well,” said Thor, thinking for some reason that it was up to him to decide. “Go now and leave the rest to us.”

“No, I want to know,” Fandral interrupted, his voice mild but an unusual seriousness on his face as he stepped up to the sorcerer. “Which prank is worth to put the Lady Sif’s life in danger?”

“Probably anything, really,” Loki answered with a mocking raise of his eyebrows. “You all seem to know how much I live for a good laugh, so who am I to deny?”

“Leave him for now,” Thor told the charmer. Why was he being so protective?

Volstagg patted Fandral’s shoulder pacifyingly. “He probably just messed up because he was frightened. There is no helping it just yet, no matter what tale you make him tell today.”

And Loki walked on without a cheeky comment: he was presently beyond the point of caring, it was far more tempting to be away from all eyes at last.

As they headed for the exit, he still backed up when Hogun stepped closer to him. The man’s face showed mild surprise as he detected the subtle motion. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s not worth the time without hope to teach you better,” he reassured him before moving on.

Loki let in unanswered as well, unless a faint, ironic tug at the corner of his lips counted as a response. He was preoccupied with that inner burning, some ghastly desire to claw at himself, to rip out his own rib cage and tear it apart and stomp away on it until it was merged with the ground.

-T-T-T-

The cell looms empty this time, as much as it can be derived in the momentary flashes of the flickering light: a dark box within the well-lit outside world. Electric sparkles shoot occasionally from two corners: scorched ruins of inside cameras. A tile from the ceiling lies discarded on the floor, in its place a gaping hole that leads up into a tunnel.

Sif takes a blind guess that she isn't welcome today, which is slightly aggravating. “I see I won’t have to visit again,” she mumbles humourlessly and turns back.

“There is no vent in the ceiling,” comes the voice from a dark corner, and her look falls upon his faint outlines sitting comfortably in the back. “It’s at the foot of the bed, hidden and secured against escape. Sensors and peculiar bends serve the purpose."

"How on earth do you know that?" she muses while walking up to the wall to peer into the darkness.

He continues heedlessly:

"The cameras would be easy to dispose of but it would also trigger an alarm, so it's pointless without sufficiently preparing the escape; there should be approximately seventeen seconds between the alarm and the arrival of the resident squad. Which is impossible to set up with the surveillance working, so that's another dead end."

"I've had an educative day, too," she shares with her own reflection on the glass wall, the only clear visual point in the cell now. "I learned how to open a box of tissues correctly."

"Have you? Ever thought about opening a fashion magazine? Or looking around on the streets, for that matter?"

"As I've said before, these clothes are perfectly available for any humans in shops," she answers as calmly as little it matters to her. "But if you insist that much, we could start by you demonstrating your real attire."

Loki changes topic again like the previous subject had been non-existent. "The cell is cleaned every day while I'm escorted out for my grooming session; it's a bit too much, probably so that I don't notice the difference and use the intel for something vile. The chemicals used to disinfect contain lye and citric acid, the former also used for lutefisk, the latter for making lava lamps, whatever those are. Even the tiniest scratches I sometimes _accidentally_ make are repaired during the next cleaning. If I decide to claim and store indecipherable bits under my nails and in my ear canal, it'll take fifty-nine years and three months in earthen time to gather enough for poisoning myself upon consumption, due to which I can then break free on the way to the infirmary."

"It's not me you're bragging to, is it?" she observes. "You're trying to impress your captors."

"I'd have gone for _intimidate_ in your place if it was so. There is more, though. The bedding is changed every three days to an identical piece: five sets are circulated at my disposal. I occasionally set up illusions for fun. I make the fleshiest one think he wades in bodily fluids and he has to clamber through the entire cell with his scrub."

"Your illusions last here while you're out?"

A smirk denies the answer to the purpose-bearing question; that she can see it makes her realise the torn-up cell is gradually losing its darkness.

“There’s a speck on the table foot’s corner that the cleaner has made this morning. He's in three times a week, leaves a smudge or two somewhere at each occasion. Ironic, isn’t it? It isn’t a decipherable message of any sorts. I’ve made a new Tryngom-like language from the pattern, though. It’s unfinished, but care to hear its basic rules?”

"I already know how bored and witty you are, no use to depict it further,” Sif mutters to the ceiling.

“Oh, we're so long over the bored phase.”

“You’re doing this to yourself, Loki.”

He scoffs lightly in irritation, his hands rise and fall back onto his knees. “I’m offered an unfair deal. It’s been months of no progress whatsoever. Get me out, Sif. Please.”

“You’re entertained to their best abilities. I heard you’re playing 4D chess, whatever that means.”

“And I heard they consider it challenging. Care to try it with me sometime?”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Passing a challenge is not the most valorous deed, Warmaiden.”

“And there I thought it was but a friendly offer," comes her mild scoff.

“That’s a _yes_ , is it? Next Friday? How many days is that exactly?”

“Try answering Fury’s questions instead. You’d be surprised how fair they can be when pleased.”

Now there is enough light for his eyes to glow up in the electric flashes as he looks at her with curiosity. “What questions did _you_ answer?”

“Whatever I was asked, just like you should.”

“Whatever? Even deeply personal ones?”

"These are impersonal matters."

"And you answered everything honestly?"

"Or I set them on the path to finding the answer."

Loki chuckles softly at her evasion; the flashing halts for those seconds. "And did you pull through it without losing your patience over their senseless intrusion?"

“There was none of that sort. I told them things about the worlds, our technology.”

“I can do that so much better," Loki breathes, devastated. "This is outrageously unfair. Have them ask me those instead. I'll hold presentations. It'll be grander than their flat screens. I'll make them drink knowledge with gaping mouths. They won't only learn what is truly existent, but also how it can be turned to the benefit of this very land. I can make the mud and rock here bloom, from an appropriate position. I can answer anything in that area. No exceptions. Even their water drainage system has plenty to improve."

Sif listens to him ramble on with a smile tugging at her lips, which the sorcerer either ignores or plays along with. She wonders if Loki believes to act his younger self. It does emit that energy, but it's way too different from the sneaking, wary, lordly, prickly figure she remembers from all the centuries ago. This one is not what her answers to Fury's men depicted, and she answered all without the need for veils.

Except one, because no answer at hand tasted good enough on her tongue; but it satisfied them when she finally gave them the one closest to the truth ( _He’s my friend._ ), even though they know his deeds were against Asgard as well. He isn’t anything else she can think of. Although he isn’t a typical example of a friend either, naturally. Loki. He’s just Loki. That’s the only word fitting him: it’s a one-person category or something.

Well, it wasn’t the easiest part of the conversation regardless.

_He’s my friend._ After all, he isn’t family, and she isn’t currently aware of anything that would make him an enemy.

_And are you his friend, too?_

_Yes, I am._ After all, she spoke for him when he appeared and was unable to speak for himself; she’s been labouring for his release ever since. (Thor had insisted that Loki had redeemed himself before his supposed passing.)

_Does_ he _consider you his friend?_

His faint smile at her interrupts her thoughts after the unnoticed silence. "The wonder-barrier is down while I'm taken out of here. No one is almighty, at least not in the known realms."

Her eyebrows arch in surprise. "They don't restrict your magic for outings?"

"They do." His voice is trustfully low once again in the dim cell, to reveal the secret: "With the same ancient technology Thor carried in his pockets back in 2012."

She stares back at his well acted squint, utterly confused about his intention. Undoubtedly, what he's just revealed is a valuable card in his game with SHIELD. So what for?

Again, it isn't _her_ game, she reminds herself, it's not her failure if she doesn't figure it out. Her task, as she strives to see the current Loki in a fitting place rather than in one earned by his past deeds, is to find out what he wants this time, for everyone – for Fury and for Thor and for Loki and a bit for herself. She is but a messenger of some sort. (Maybe a tool.) The actual game is played over her head, and when thinking about that, about Loki having talked _over_ her for the past months, she feels small. And she is now relieved about the way she answered the last question.

_Does_ he _consider you his friend?_

She could have elaborated an hour's worth of " _but_ "-s with herself or anyone involved, regardless of which answer she chose to explore. So in the end, she just named the clearest truth.

_I cannot know that._


	7. Chapter 7

-o-O-o-

A fresh scrape across the untouched runes on his chest, a pained back, a punctured leg: they were a splendid excuse from moving around. This time, it was him that didn’t visit the healers. He spat at the world and spent several days, uncounted, on his bed among high-propped pillows. At first, he waited for his powers to refill before using them to heal; but after they did, he left them untouched, staying in all day instead, taking sustenance to himself only when it was carried to him by thoughtful servants. The most appalling moments of that night kept replaying before him when he closed his eyes, as if in a loop. He jumped to fly, and the hideous force jerked him downwards. He hit the ground gracelessly, letting her on her own fall. He turned and saw her get impaled. He jumped to fly and fell. He wouldn’t heal her. He yelled back at her. He let her fall. He took the battle too lightly. He let her get stung. He relied on Thor’s help. He wouldn’t heal her. He jumped to fly, but he let her fall. He fought her. He had her almost die, because he wanted to teach her humility.

He let the thoughts circle inside his skull as they liked, every moment of it served him right. They joined the throbbing pain in his ribs as he sought an easing position, frowning weakly in his pathetic discomfort. He didn’t make a move to get rid of anything. They said it was healthy to let thoughts gush forth, that they mended like that. He knew that was gibberish; this swirl of thoughts didn’t mend anything, it was rotting his insides.

He had set up his own pretended eloping by the time Father sent for his sons for the earned reprimand; while he idled in here waiting for the matter to age into insignificance, people combed through the surrounding city to fish him out of the common folk.

Making half-hearted attempts to figure out the secrets of telekinesis on his own helped more at passing time during the days than at improving his abilities; though it looked like he was taking on a challenge, it was but an excuse not to get up or do anything specific for hours, apart from flicking his fingers towards random objects across the room.

He made sure to send an illusionary clone of himself sneaking around the palace walls now and then, so belief in his recluse remained firm. It was when he discovered that he could see and hear through the eyes of these projections, if channelled right. Normally, he’d have rejoiced and instantly put it in use for the ideas flooding his mind, but he postponed it now and settled with sending people on their way when they tried to chat him up. Having his projections stacked with sacks of food and books or just in a hurry usually did the trick.

Whether others thought anything of his cowardly absence didn’t matter. Getting up, treading around like this made him look like some morose geezer anyway, not something to show in public. Especially not near the healing chambers right now, where the truth he dreaded was to be found. So his longest journey in those days was to his window, to take in the sunlight his eyes then joyfully consumed as an escape from the narrow walls into the far-reaching sight of the golden city: his home, his prison, his unchosen shelter.

Mother paid a visit in his room unexpectedly, on the possibly-third day. It seemed like an inconvenient coincidence, but Loki suspected she knew exactly when she wanted to come. It was too late to start the undignified clamber into a sitting position by the time she was inside, so he chose not to move from the pillows or hide his neglected state, only his gaze fell on her. “It’s not my fault they’re so gullible,” he pointed out as she approached.

“I didn’t come to sell you out.”

“I’m fine,” he reassured her then.

“I wouldn’t doubt that,” she said while sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t, please,” Loki pleaded when she proceeded to heal what the bandages hid.

She complied, and her reach ended up in his hair instead, brushing it back, caressing his forehead, like he was a boy in his sickbed. “What are you doing?” she asked softly.

“Reminding my body of pain,” he mumbled. “I could get reckless if it forgets.”

Not revealing whether she believed it, she gazed at him faintly smiling for a while.

“Lady Sif is doing all right,” she let him know then unasked. “Her condition got stabilised, and now all she needs is some rest to let her body mend itself.”

He took the news in silently, with eyes cast down.

“Thor paid her a visit yesterday with his friends,” Frigga continued. “Perhaps you might want to-“

“Mother, teach me,” Loki interrupted then, looking straight at her from the pillow. “Teach me more to fight.”

“Don’t we train so much already?”

“Give me more,” he insisted, demand hissing in his tone. “Give me the spells that devastate.”

“You have a great repertoire of attack spells. They should aid you well if you choose them wisely.”

“I’ll need stronger ones to grow, Mother.”

“They aren’t the first you need for that.”

“You won’t help me then?”

Her look was apologetic, but not relenting. “What happened that made you reconsider this?”

“I’m ready to learn more, that is all. I’m taking my options into account.”

By then, his gaze was away again, and his face, like his answer, a faultless display of inaccessibility.

“Vanaheim was going to bring you misfortune at a point in your life,” she said softly regardless. “I may be selfish, but I’m glad it happened while I’m still here to support you through it. I wish I could be there at each turning point.”

Loki never argued with her harshly, but now he felt especially like he was unjustly pushed back into the time of children’s tales. “You don’t need to be there if you send me with your finest tools,” he noted.

“With the spells that devastate?”

“If not this, then what do you believe I’m meant to do, Mother?” he asked, soft resentment in his voice. “Be a rescuer of the fallen? Defender of the weak? Mender of the plagued? Do you wish me to walk Midgard and raise humans from the dirt they crawl in, or Jotunheim and embrace the outcasts? Is that what you think would prove me worthy of the throne?”

“You think lowly of the feeble,” she derived.

“Thor doesn’t think either of them feeble. How come he isn’t the one sent to hold them up?”

“Thor loves and hates blindly. He has a lot to learn about both nations. He inherited Odin’s affection for those meek little creatures. But they’re still young, not ready to take all he’d be willing to give them.”

She didn’t show her approval as unwilled interest lit up in the teal eyes. “As for the Frost Giants,” she continued, “you know how much he hates them. The entire palace knows, in fact.”

“They _are_ vile, unwilling to compromise in any way.”

“And if sent to aid them, would you do Thor’s bidding instead?”

“Destroy them all? I don’t think that’s possible in one day.”

“What will _you_ do to them when you become King?”

“It depends on what powers you’ll let me have.”

He knew from her silence that she wouldn’t be swayed; but her words afterwards still caught him off-guard. “The task that fell upon your shoulders there exceeded your current abilities,” she admitted. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for your choices. Those were the right decisions, and you did a marvellous job. You did much better than you could have been expected to.”

“That night made me realise I’ve been heading into the wrong direction, Mother. I never want to do this again.”

“You’re interested in forbidden magic. You’ve been familiarising with it secretly, haven’t you? I’m not surprised. In the end, you turned out to be my son, rather than Odin’s.”

His smile mirrored hers against his will as she fondled his cheek, and then his forehead once again. He felt the light breeze of seidr seep through his skin before he could have protested.

“If you want to heal on your own, you’ll need a good, long rest,” she whispered. “By my powers, I bid you to leave the turmoil of your mind for a bit. Sleep long and smooth, my Prince.”

It was but a minute spent in unthinking darkness, until the ruckus outside tugged his mind back into reality. The weight of his body was warm and pleasant as he clambered up to open the window shutters and take a look at the gathering down in the garden. He only regretted not glancing into the mirror beforehand when a _there he is_ exclamation drew all eyes to him right away: a handful of trainees, a pair of gold-clad guards and a maid.

“That’s not him, it’s just a tormented spirit, you dimwit,” Brokk grunted while staring unrestrained.

“Is it?” Thor inquired, anger shading his face and voice. “I reckon it’s an illusion, rather, to drive us away, like so many times before.”

“My arse,” Volstagg waved. “It’s way too rumpled for that primadonna.”

“A primadonna that sent me to the other end of the world in search for some non-existent weed cause supposedly, Mother was dying!” roared the blond. “I’ll show you it’s nothing, and then I’ll beat the living soul out of the real him!”

By this point, Loki’s waking mind had more or less worked out the situation. He closed the shutters the moment Thor started climbing the ornamented wall, and he swiftly cast two, no, three jinxes on it with his next breath.

“My dear people, you cannot be fooled, can you?” said his illusionary clone sitting in the grass behind the group, directing attention on itself. “It is true indeed, I’ve been reading here in complete innocence all along.”

The doubtful response was interrupted by Thor’s yelp and a popping sound as he fell back, turning into a toad mid-air; and with that, Loki was free to dress himself for the public in comfort.

Sif still had a day or two in the infirmary when he re-joined the world, he heard, and he was unsure whether he was to pay a visit. In the end, he figured (most certainly not because of his personal reluctance to face her) that she felt angered, possibly disinterested due to his outburst (he did pour out all he usually withheld out of learned courtesy, and at the time when she was agitated herself), so he stayed away instead of giving her a chance to send him off to Hel. He knew her enough to know she never wasted time on pointless bickers, except-

Nevertheless, he was also busy with the commonly favoured art of _training_. In his vocabulary, it meant practicing spells, this time the one he’d just learned. His unembodied clone did marvellous services for him, from spying on others to replacing him at dangerous or volatile situations.

With such clever setting-up, he was able to pretend that he could become invulnerable. It had worked for quite a while before Thor finally unveiled the trick; and it wasn’t even his own duel, the insolent oaf dragged him out by the back of his neck like they hadn’t been aging equally, without a second thought, when it wasn’t his business. _You could get into big trouble in war if your own comrades think you can’t be hurt_ , he explained, loudly as the only way he knew how to explain things. Then again, Loki was yelling as well, for the first time joining that brutish row in public. Because this one really burnt.

He would remember it forever, he thought, and take revenge for it again and again and again, in a different way each time. So many ideas to come! That was what soothed him in the end and let Thor have the final word.

His clone detected Sif once or twice as well, quite accidentally, of course; he was surprised to see her take walks with Mother. The latter was aware of his presence each time: a mischievous wink in his direction made sure he knew and stayed reminded that his lurking was unwelcome.

“You would make a splendid Queen of Asgard,” he caught her telling Sif once, in her tone that didn’t reveal whether it held a joking intent. “What do you say to catching one of my sons for that purpose?”

“That the Norns have their own mysterious purposes, my Queen,” answered the maiden with a hand unconsciously scratching her neck.

Her ability to call life back into injured limbs and various other parts of the body had become a living legend ( _The Massage of Sullen Warriors_ it came to be called), even though she had shared her skill a mere few times since their return from the Tryngom land; it was mostly remembered on youngsters’ lips as each others’ mockery, teasing the way how even the sturdiest warrior couldn’t stop himself from praising the golden hands like some meek poet during the procedure. Meanwhile, trustful whispers revealed the ways it livened up the worn body cell by cell. And Sif wasn’t even as greedy about it as initially presented. You didn’t need to be in her tightest circles to receive it, a little respect was more than enough. The scarcity of the service lay in this folk’s incapability to show the required attitude. Not to mention the general insistence on pride.

Well, Loki was a leading example at that. Dogging the maiden’s steps for a chance to be of use to her like in the past, displaying such an apparent plead for her gratitude was not something he was willing to do. Thus, it had already happened twice that he knew she would not stand for long after her self-destructive victories, and he turned his back on her leave. There were others to note and question her senseless toil now, primarily the elite group of misplaced conceit, with Thor in the centre. Her time in those circles had increased significantly: she belonged. Loki observed with the driest objectiveness when he took notice, that she didn’t end up as an outcast like it seemed at the very beginning; she didn’t even feel vengeful for the past. How on earth she did it remained a secret to the sorcerer’s peering eyes.

He spent lengthier times on the training grounds now, too; mostly at night under the hazy lights of the Universe, undisturbed by the young warriors who crowded up in the feasting halls at those hours. Sometimes he used his sorceric powers, sometimes he chose some form of physical extort. Drilling was suddenly not so appalling: while tormenting his body with repeated, monotonous gestures filled with the unknown, dreadful, silent force accumulated in him, his thoughts condensed into what really mattered instead of running rampant. He would repeat a single move for hours, much unlike he used to do earlier. He found never-felt easiness at losing himself in it. Time seemed to stop after the umpteenth repetition, the anger he suppressed during the day in conviction of full control could now tear at him as it liked. And anger, as he had discovered, helped greatly at narrowing his focus: the thing he lacked at the highest pace of battles.

He could list a thousand people’s crimes against him when consciously striving for that stream, but in the end, it always flowed into a bed of self-loathing. He let it happen, he took guilt for what it was: a natural consequence, a side product of the sacrifice he had made by quitting the habit of healing the Lady Sif’s injuries when needed. He didn’t fight the traitor’s role pushing itself onto him; in fact, he felt relieved in it. He thrived when he stood alone. He often relished this bitter-sour sensation while he chose an ethereal form of training, standing in the middle of the torch-lit circular yard lined with weapon stands, arms loosely hanging but inviting the powers from the depths of his soul, clawing deeper, deeper, deeper. He’d never figured out the art of telekinesis, while now, as his consciousness entangled with the dilute energy, he sensed it embodying, asking, ready to give his will a shape. Within his binding mind, it wafted up as smoke when his attention was in the sky, it slithered soft among the training puppets as he contemplated them, it melted through his fingers as he attempted to hold it. It extended like an explosion, limber spikes shooting towards the intruder, no matter who, to pierce their throat so many times at once that their head rolled off to the battle-worn cobblestones.

Eyes cast down, he thought of the splintered shoulder that Sif had hidden away with once: she had laughed along with him through her thundering pain while they worked out her story to tell if asked about her fast recovery the next day. The absurdity of their pooled ideas left them breathless as they strived to avoid calling unwanted attention. If Thor’s laugh was named sunshine, then hers was the murky dawn.

The malevolent seidr was gone by the time the visitor entered the dark from a lit corridor.

“I want to avenge the lady,” Fandral announced as greeting. “Fight me.”

“Is it urgent?” Loki inquired motionlessly.

“It can wait until daylight for everyone to see your defeat.”

He didn’t respond to that; but the silence wasn’t left to stretch long, Fandral only stopped by a weapon stand and pulled out a pair of training swords.

“Let’s make it knightly, I like it fitting the cause.”

A dagger in Loki’s hand deflected the blade thrown towards him. Then a light flick of his wrist sent the knife flying towards the heart of the blond.

“Well, if not, then not,” Fandral allowed after evading it, and he launched at him.

Blades, knees, unarmoured lower arms clashed; the charmer hadn’t taken the time to notify his opponent in advance and have them both make formal preparations. Loki sought the catch in it at the back of his mind while he evaded the blade’s edge, aiming his own knives, different for each move, at vital spots left unprotected: wrist, neck, heart, eyes. Taking an eye could have started a lengthy row of fun; he was curious how its owner would set it up before the public the next day.

“You won’t even question my motives at taking revenge on you?” Fandral inquired between two breaths. “No denial or defence? How come?”

“There is nothing to deny until you voice your blame. Why don’t you share your version of the story, for a start?”

“My version,” he contemplated while his blade chased the nimble prince across the ground, “it doesn’t include superfluous details. It’s not even a story, just a mere observation: you let her get hurt,” said the defender of ladies’ honour as his powerful kick found Loki in the stomach, sending the sorcerer at the wall. He followed suit, sword to keep the trickster at bay, rightfully distrusting his collapsed posture that struggled for air. “That’s some sad love polygon we have here,” he panted towering over the sorcerer’s defeated form.

Loki’s insulted hiss accompanied the teal splash of energy towards the man. Fandral spun out of its way and managed to evade most of it; his blade never left the other’s proximity, however.

“Getting frustrated by the truth, eh?” he muttered. “It’s nice to see something genuine in you, finall-“ With a yelp stuck in his throat, he reeled forward and dropped the sword; Loki’s form melted into thin air as it fell through him.

The sorcerer manifested behind his opponent a moment later: a hand holding onto the knife in the other’s lower back, ready to twist it at resistance. “The wine you’ve drunk colours your imagination,” he pointed out. “Your confidence in predicting me is too high to fight me tonight.”

“A brilliant proof to my point. And to think you wasted that scarce invisibility gem on me…” Fandral sighed through his pain. “I must take it as an unintended compliment. I could hear you wheeze, by the way.”

“And?”

“Well, you still got me undefended. You win this one, cheater. It’s dishonourable to wail against defeat. Next time, I’ll be less neglectful of your vile wits.”

“What makes you assume there is a next time, with your scornful language?”

The man twisted and chuckled despite the anguish as the blade lightly pressed towards his spine; as if they had been in some playful wrestle. “Come on, Loki, that’s too sinister even for you.”

“You think?”

“Unless you’ve spent your day in hideout mastering the art of viciousness. I noticed you never paid your duty to Lady Sif in the infirmary.”

Loki’s manifested knife dissipated at that moment, and he glanced down at his empty palm while stepping back, contemplating the working of the newly discovered ability. “There were enough of you to bother her,” he said meanwhile.

“Time goes really slow in those chambers, you know; practically nothing is allowed in, not even a book. I’m sure she’d have been delighted if you’d helped her out with a few.” Fandral stumbled but found support in the wall before he’d have fallen. “We couldn’t sneak in a morsel, not even His Highness the Elder Prince. And we tried the grandest plots we could throw together, but it was nothing close to your shrewd manoeuvres – it is the alcohol indeed, don’t tell them I said that.”

“It’s nothing memorable to keep in mind,” Loki assured him. “But it’s best if I leave you to yourself for now.”

“Wait,” Fandral called after the sorcerer’s back. “Be a lamb and help me walk to the infirmary first, will you?”

Loki’s momentary frown of surprise was gone by the time he turned back, a mask of tease ready. “Afraid to ask for my personal aid?”

“Don’t you dare think about healing me,” warned the charmer as he put his arm around Loki’s shoulder. “This is enough humiliation for today.”

“And you think you can tell the end of it, that’s adorable.”

Fandral only spoke up when their steps matched in rhythm and the painful tugs on his wound ceased. “So you’re not friends?” he inquired bluntly. “What are you then?”

Loki didn’t know what he was, but he knew now that Fandral was a monster. “No more than you or me,” he responded calmly. “Two people striving to get their own ways over everyone else.”

“That you are, but I’m not so sure about her. She claims to fight for valour, and to prove she’s no different from the rest, but then she’s something utterly foreign among men at times of peace. Look at her in her discourses, and _then_ tell me she’s the same as you and me.”

“She’s no less hungry for earning a name.”

“And yet she doesn’t rise up to establish her dominance. She works like any other maiden: she complies to have her way. That’s not like you, Loki, whose only acknowledged way is to have everything in his own hand, and would sooner fail in his goals than trust anyone with them.”

“You clearly walk these grounds with your eyes closed if you think so,” the sorcerer let him know with his best intentions.

“Manipulating others into serving you against their will is not what I mean,” said the blond somewhat sharply.

“Wouldn’t you choose the means that cannot be fought back against, if you could?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. And the Lady Sif, too… How come I get so close every time but never get to win against her? Am I really that honourable?”

“For a daydream, it’s sweet, but she does get you every time without your assistance.”

“Because I’m blind to her real self; even while she’s sending me to the ground, I keep seeing a maiden, a playful court banter, not a trial of strength. Comfort me: don’t you have the same impression of her?”

“She’s protective, that’s her weakness,” Loki told him instead of answering. “She throws herself witlessly between the endangered and the attacker. For you, a hypocritical buffoon who would never play this against a lady, there is slim chance of winning.”

“Is that so? Then how come you, a true villain, haven’t won against her once?” Fandral asked with honest curiosity.

Loki chuckled quietly as acknowledgement of his defeat.

Fandral followed after a minute’s silent limping. “She slipped, can you believe that?” he said then unexpectedly. For a second, Loki didn’t even know what he meant, and then blood crept into his temple at the realisation.

“She never talks about you unless prompted,” the charmer went on. “But don’t take it the wrong way, it could have many reasons. And only one thing is certain: she’s not indifferent towards you. Then again, no one really is, you make sure everyone gets a piece or two of your annoying pranks. I keep wondering why you don’t try pairing that stuck-up nature of yours with some overacted generosity to sweep people off their feet. Thor doesn’t need to make effort to do that, and it’s annoying as Hel, I know. I hate it just as much as you do, it isn’t fair. We have to work our souls out to get out of his shadow and have some of those dreamy ladies’ attention. But that doesn’t mean we can’t!” he pointed out with fervour before taking his arm off the other’s shoulder by the infirmary. “You shouldn’t hate the world for not receiving the same for free. It just saddens you. Don’t be sad, Loki, it’s distasteful for a man.”

“As it is unfitting for a woman’s face, I presume,” said the sorcerer, mocking his companion’s protectiveness of the harmed maiden.

Fandral suddenly grew serious at that, and he stopped abruptly in front of the dimly lit healing chambers. “Tell me honestly: what did you do that night?” he asked.

The response was a wordless look of venom green while Loki backed up, clearly indicating he wasn’t going to discuss anything of sorts with him.

“Treasure this friendship of hers,” Fandral called after him. “She’s about the only person by now that you’ve got caring for your straying paths besides your brother.”

“My brother,” he spat at once looking back on his way, “has no concern for my ways whatsoever.”

“Oh, Loki,” Fandral sighed with unveiled pity before entering, leaving the sorcerer to steadily march into the darkness by himself.

-T-T-T-

This time, yellow and green vapours dim the cell. The shrivelled figure lies motionlessly and keeps an empty stare upwards from the naked rock. The aged, blackened blood stains are not his, perhaps never been. Strings crooked and of undoubtedly vile origin hold the thinned limbs tightly to the nature-carved support. His struggle against each weak breath crawls under the warmaiden’s skin in a minute. She idles halfway towards the cell for a few seconds unwittingly, waiting in vain for acknowledgement of her arrival.

“What a stunning play,” she notes then.

There is no response whatsoever. The looming shadow at the top of the cell, wafting like a pitch black cloud, suggests a fanged mouth when her attention is driven there by a single drop crawling down and falling into the captive’s gaping mouth. A few seconds pass before it induces a gurgling inhale, and ripples of tremor swim across the wired body. The eyes of faded teal roll up, but the effort to break free from the moldy ropes is so weak it almost escapes her attention.

Her stomach floats inside her like a stray balloon: her body’s protest against the continuous strain of the past period.

When the long silence is broken by a tormented sigh, she forces voice back into her throat. “I never got to see the tragedy you wrote, so if this is a sequel, excuse my failure to follow. I only know you tried hard to disquiet Fury last time with an abundance of questions. Blind shots in the dark, I reckon.” She notes that deliberately, in an attempt to save the secrets he got dangerously close to with his supposed guesses. “You probably know and mourn over your failure at it, since you won’t reward my efforts with your presence today, even though I’m taking this precious time to visit.”

The lousy attempt at guilt or even a defensive response doesn’t pay off. While waiting for a reply, she uses a hand to reel the chair before the cell with a conspicuous gesture; then she sits down, her movement more careful than she intended to display: her left shoulder shoots thundering protest into her skull at any stir of her encased arm, and each twinge twists her stomach to an uncomfortable level. She is growing weary of the nights spent with grinding her teeth in cushion-filled chairs; and just now, she realises her last mocking hint could even be interpreted as her having difficulties doing things from her injury, supporting his possible conviction of her wearing out. Even though it doesn’t stop her from anything, really. She stands firm, ignoring the pesky worry that she might die, or shrivel up, or suffer endlessly, while these two are immersed in their haggle.

Now and then, she wonders if he would really let it happen. She recognises the thought as her memories self-righteously arching towards the past Loki, the spoilt and complicated younger prince, which she still detects in this life-burdened prisoner. She resigns in this mixed perception of an innocent boy and the devil himself; and she keeps to her task to feed her higher desires for the safety of a world, which Loki plays against, if he plays at all. And would it still be him if he didn’t?

Fury seemed riled up during their last discussion, right after the man’s visit to this cell. He clearly felt betrayed, and suspicious towards her. _How does he know_ , he asked her, demanded her as greeting, and although she deciphered quickly that the God of Mischief had put his finger on something unwanted, she would not guess the answer. _You and everyone else will quit seeing him_ , ranted the Director, _but no, it would only prove to him he’s right. It can’t happen, Lady Sif, he can’t see the big picture, or this is all for naught,_ he explained to her. _I’m not the talemonger_ , she clarified lukewarmly, although she had nothing to prove it for the moment. _He gets in control and we’re done, we’re at war_ , Fury said _. If you do have that ounce of caring for this planet, or for him, that I see in you, you continue speaking with him, and you let him know he’s got nothing. Do you understand? He’s got nothing._

The last sentence, snarled at her unflinching form like a cornered dog barks at its attackers, revealed that Loki was very much on the right path. Without asking questions or stealing answers beforehand. She wouldn’t ask either, not about what undisclosed plans this little human seems to have with his captured god. Her lack of meaningful response, her arched eyebrows were rather marked with subtle pride towards the younger prince. How indeed. It was his essence. Fifteen hundred years taught Sif to save her time from such futile musing, but these humans won’t learn the same in just a decade, naturally, so she left it at that, and she yields – this is her work towards the goals appointed, for now. Agreed, she needs to lose this traitorous mark on her skin, in sake of her role at protecting the meek land from the current threat. Is taming the notorious chaos-bringer still the Director’s goal, however, or is it something more ambitious and consequently laughable? Is it only her personal ambition now? Does Thor who wouldn’t visit still want it to happen? Did he ever want it at all, or was it only her own biased, wishful derivation? Has she remained alone with this clownish strife?

The dream from a fevered slumber lingers in her memory: she was wearing the softest dress, the harsh moonlight shone through it casting the pattern of the forest above her, and she was holding up the skirt with meticulous care, so no corners tilted out at her steps. The weight in the makeshift wrapping swung along with her advance, her free arm around it gave support and warmth so the drowsily fidgeting young snakes didn’t stray out into the cold.

“A new solar year is imminent,” she points out, voice tired of her own bothersome musing and from not getting a response, from the impression that no one is listening. “People here celebrate it like it’s an accomplishment. They celebrate new years in several ways, actually: birthdays, wedding anniversaries, starts and ends of schooling. They carve streaks of time bits into everything. They tend to their minuscule amount of time on this plane like to a piece of jewel.”

The head turns tardily, the neck thin and the skin breaking along hair-cracks; blood seeps out through the delicate gaps, dark and glinting silver. The battle-hardened maiden isn’t weak against gore, but constant nausea tugs at her lungs lately. And she has been for clarity all her life; contradictions, inner mess doesn’t fit into her mind, she feels, it tears her apart at the opposing directions of the pull.

„I’d have work to do that night, were it not for my current appearance,” she notes, intending to speak to the trickster behind the mirage, but her conviction takes over that she’s confessing to the deaf wall he pulled up at the beginning. She continues nevertheless, letting it pour out. “Not at my own whim, mind you. If there were no other concerns in the world, I’d visit New Asgard and have something closer to the feasts we used to enjoy in our youth. Saehrimnir’s flesh used to feed us all profusely. There aren’t many things I wouldn’t give to have it once more. Do you remember, Loki? His taste?”

The venom drop finds the mouth heedlessly of the changed position, crawling into the throat undisturbed. Fine tremor keeps the body look alive, but the eyes gaze past the warmaiden’s shoulder, ever-varying their sharpness.

She leans forward in her sitting unintentionally, striving to have his attention. “What happens if I can’t do my part? Won’t you ask _me_ that? You must be wondering, or trying to figure it out on your own.”

The impatience to resolve this matter is part of what the poison is doing to her, she’s aware of that. She holds fine but the fear of the unknown thing crawling around freely under her skin is still there. It strives to weaken her valour, and it strengthens her wish to be of help to Loki in this game at which she plays an agent; not only to Fury, and not entirely at her own will. Silvertongue is wrong, she would not _serve_ the Director, and especially not lately; she has found resentment towards the man’s attitude to Loki. Loki sees her as a tool, but so does Fury. Both are aggravating.

“The Director has questioned me about some anguish you face,” she says softly, as if surveillance couldn’t hear her betrayal. Her temple burns darkly meanwhile as she gazes at the tragic mirage. “The nightmares that toss your body around. The panic that greets you at the moments of waking. The pain in your lower back that doesn’t ease. Naturally, I know nothing about these, as I haven’t known anything about you for a while. Do you sleep badly because of the long idleness in this narrow place? Do you ache from past wounds, or recent ones? How long do you plan on crouching in here, _Trickster God_?

Or is he here out of sulk, out of refusal to play a game he didn’t induce? _She_ would refuse in his place. She would get stuck here out of pride. But not Loki. The Loki she used to know is slithery as a snake, bending and coiling in the way the escape route leads, until he takes over the leading role. What the hell is he doing now?

“Perhaps it is time to stop blaming others for your own misery,” she says then unthinking; “and get back to helping yourself. You don’t need advice on that one, do you?”

When the shrivelled figure sighs its last breath with audible relief, and it disintegrates into a semi-fluent pool with a sickening squelch, the lump at the back of her throat jumps up, and she leaves the room quickly to breathe the nausea back down.

Thus, if there was a response due for her after the play, she never finds out. But the grudge sensed from him indicates that she’s rather out of prestige right now, as the traitor he easily made her feel. Maybe she has indeed lost the last bit of control she felt to have over the flow of events before. Maybe Loki wouldn’t heed her bidding that’s meant to help him leave this box safely, because he’s preoccupied with his own personal rebellion against the entire system, bent on breaking himself against the wall of the outside world that tries to confine his flaring pride, letting himself be ground up in his insistence, and killed during his resistance. Or tortured, or just locked away more severely, without the need to assume the worst. Nevertheless, if Sif proves useless at these urgent times, she definitely won’t be able to see him, let alone speak with him again.


	8. Chapter 8

-o-O-o-

_You could perform this magic, too, you know._

He’d been petite at the time, hadn’t quite been listening, occupied with the flakes of rainbow-coloured energy floating around them, in a safe corner of the hall where the raging storm didn’t reach. Loki couldn’t even drag a chair without hassle, while Thor was hurling them at servants that had denied his little brother’s wish and made him wail in his unspeakable misery. He wondered if Thor would get ahead of him with magic as well, and Frigga smiled at it.

_Thor is much better at brawling than sorcery. You will make a great pair. He has powerful lightning, and you have obedient seidr within._

It was the strangest thing he’d heard in a while, the existence of anything he would do differently from his big brother, his other half, his wholeness. In bafflement, he was peeking under the lifted neck of his shirt to find the foreign thing of separation when Mother took his hands, her voice hushed like her smile.

_Let’s surprise him and Father, shall we?_

And that did it, it made his eyes light up in anticipation.

His consciousness returned from the self-willed detour to a vibrating blend of shouts and clashes, and to his body being dragged on the ground by a leg. While attempting in vain to get up from the undignified pose, he was dragged over a pile of fresh corpses – some familiar faces gaped after him on his unwilled travel. The blood trail left behind on the rocks might as well have been his own, the way his head ached. The leaden sky echoed with his name.

He caught glimpses of the ongoing battle around him and his captor: a troll, he just recalled. When Thor’s upside down figure swam into his sight, the blond struggling to rid himself of his opponents, with his glare fixed on his brother, the recent past flooded Loki’s mind, and remembering the purpose of not resisting, he went limp against the pull: he didn’t need his skull to be smashed in further with silencing intent.

The troll was grunting some arrhythmic melody while it dragged him to a long searched entrance of the underground cave, much closer to the battle than expected. He hadn’t been ready, came the false thought as the dirt walls closed in around him suddenly, thirst for air overwhelming him quicker than it was normal.

The light died a slow and torturous death as they proceeded on the coarsely carved, sloping ground. He found his mind arching for the hope that it would stop, but the dark kept weighing and weighing even after nothing other than bulky steps and light crumbling of earth reached his senses in the rapidly spinning cave. The precipitation over his body was chilled and sharp, and his formerly clever-looking idea terrible: his worst, and last, ever, he thought now.

Of course he did, it was a textbook example of oppressing the spirit. The caverns had an eerie aura; esoteric powers, exhaled bit by bit throughout centuries, prevented a will to escape. Captives lost their mood to fidget around here, let alone try to break free. The gloom sitting on your heart was artificial.

Along with his futile knowledge, he was shoved into a hole in the wall. Earth and creaking metal slammed against his hunched body. The astonished whimper that escaped his lips at the instant realisation wasn’t quite his own, and the heavy steps treading farther filled him with dread of being left alone with this compressed darkness, worming in an unnatural pose like an upturned insect. His palms were already tampering around on the narrow walls while he struggled to catch his breath. He was able to turn around and get on his knees; it didn’t lift his mood much, but he chanted the discovery in his mind with the intention to remember it until it got useful. He had air, he added, although he had to fight the numbing dark for each gulp. His fingers curled around lukewarm, slimy metal bars and his forehead leaned to them to relish the sensation of openness on the other side. There _was_ an open to get out to, he pressed against his growing disbelief. The metal had creaked, and now it was ever-so-slightly trembling under his desperate tugs, it was hinged. He had knives, he had all kinds of sharp tools, he had magic. He had magic! He had light! But that meant he could have been noticed, and that was most likely bad news here. When trolls fidgeted around nearby, the least you were noticed the longer you lasted. Why in Heavens did he have to get in here? For the damn glory? Because there was no other way to drive out these creatures pestering the land than finding their dwelling and smoking them out? Or because valuable people had been kidnapped and kept in here? People that had a voice to spread his name after he had led them out to safety?

Yes, he had always been great at cunning excuses.

The truth stung: he had simply, deliberately made a fool out of himself on the battle ground, without the faintest desire to end up in here. He’d been a valiant knight. How the others must have been laughing at the jest now. It might have looked well with warriors larger than him, but when he was the one taking the blow for the careless Lady Sif, it was very misplaced and pitiful. There hadn’t been enough time for a show, no time for a properly explanative setting that would have paved his way to be commemorated among the greatest. His sacrifice would be remembered as a pathetic attempt to improve in the eve of his life.

Unless he performed a grand comeback, of course: that would turn the façade into part of a daring scheme. That would be remembered in codices. Alfheim would be the first country he saved. Or died saving. How significant was the difference anyway?

The light, he was reminded, that would lead the way to tell.

The consuming dread only allowed a faint glow of seidr in his palm, and he covered it with the other one, breathing heavily as he took in the faintest glint of crystals stuck in the crooked tunnel walls. He had known from the timidly scraping silence that the monster was treading away, the fear was utterly baseless, and still it churned his mind; it jerked his body backwards in the narrow place as the light glinted on a pair of faded orbs. Another captive in the opposite wall, he derived and forcefully ignored the warning of his instincts. There must have been plenty other ones here, things like what he was going to turn into as years passed.

_Mother_ , wheezed the shadow weakly while he used the faint gleam and a knife to carve the earth walls around the hinges – an endless work of shedding sweat. He despised each passing minute more; his waning patience caused the knife to run into his fingers several times. And then, finally, he loosened and lifted the aged metal out of its socket. He placed it back lousily after clambering out into the space felt just as narrow, even though he was able to stand in a hunched position (trolls barely reached up to the shoulders of an Asgardian, although their sturdiness was threefold, their arms long and their hold shattering).

He used the glowing seidr in the careful nest of his palm to peek into each hole in the wall he could find, but they contained mere bones at most, no trace of the people he’d seen dragged off. This labyrinth stretched far underground: it came from way out of this land, undisturbed at the beginning – it only became a threat after it had stretched through the borders and found the people living nearby. Loki attempted to guess how many days or weeks it would take until he wandered the last of his life force away here.

_Mother, you came for me_ , said the meek whisper as he peeked into the noisy hole.

His lips were tight as he left the mostly blinded, shrivelled, slimy creature to itself. He had better things to do than drag around someone at the doorstep of their death. (A principle made in the very near past.)

He shook his head vehemently, as if he could have gotten rid of the nag before it took root. His wounded head stung and he stumbled at the motion, and the light in his protective hand shot everywhere on the walls, reflected from an impossible amount of directions, blinding him with whiteness for a few moments. His heart jumped into his throat from the unexpected, and it throbbed there like it was trying to burst out. The walls were now a single mirror, reflecting himself wherever he averted his gaze from it. Stooped on hands and knees, he stared dumbfounded at the phenomenon, wide eyes fluttering all around to see through and find the way.

The reflection had a calm expression, but the eyes were scorning at him. He was too thin. He’d been stoking up like a boar but nothing, not even a sagging abdomen. His face looked like a skull. Thor had grown so big and sturdy.

The length of his robe tangled around his legs gracelessly in his crouching; he dressed like a princess. No matter if his attire depicted the spiritual nature of his skills. Some sorcerers were able to make it look intimidating, but the Loki facing him didn’t look much reverent, as weren’t the people that lived around him day by day.

With an irate hiss, he clambered on blindly in hope to escape the cursed area. But the mirror remained on the crooked walls, showing his reflection clearer than a smooth one, and though he proceeded relentlessly, it didn’t seem to want to end. After all, he wasn’t nearly as nimble as he wanted to be. There were plenty he was unable to outrun, a maiden among them.

His light blades weren’t enough against the largest beasts out there, and they looked meagre compared to the weapons most men here showed off with. He stored them hidden, too.

He was a mother’s boy, spent manifold more time with her than anyone else at this age, regardless of her also being his tutor. Showing the compassion learned from a woman, he took things in too deeply. He had mourned the perish of a mere beast.

Gritting his teeth and gazing stubbornly forward, he went on into the assumed direction of the freshest captives. (Instinct, logic, or just a guess with a reassuring pretence?) He wished to free at least a few before finding the way out, so they could support his truth. Witnesses were necessary because his word was not to be trusted; by now, people were rightfully suspicious of everything he said. He didn’t proceed well at impressing the masses. He was a nobody. Thor would be king and he would be court clown.

Was that a robe or a dress?

He was so, so thin.

And something sharp had just dug into his palm; he yelped late in realisation. He shut his eyes tight to bear with the pain, the malicious glee in the mirrored glance burning under his eyelids. Such deep-set eyes. Always clear like an infant’s. Thor looked so much mightier with them.

Thor, it was always Thor. He could now awaken a tornado at will when angered: it was far more visual than Loki’s spells, and he hadn’t even been trying. It was his ultimate skill now. For that purpose, Loki had looked into the possibility of creating immortal slaves – a waste of time, foolish daydreams. No one was immortal. He should have called forth something from the Netherworld instead, and traded in a slice of his soul for a spectacular form of doom.

It would have happened by now, had it been worth his soul. Fame, recognition would have been. But he knew that it didn’t matter to anyone here as long as Thor was around. There was nothing Loki could have achieved to turn those marvelling eyes towards himself any more, although he still desired many things from sorcery: travelling as wind, teleporting, telekinesis, reading and shaping minds, telling futures, battling. And people thought a sorcerer could do all these. Only one of his kind knew the pain: their powers were too limited for that. The more Loki learned, the smaller and more powerless he felt against the infinite forces of the Universe.

So Thor wasn’t really stealing the sun from him, after all: he simply _failed_ to reach up to it.

But this all was nothing new, he reminded himself then. This damned cavern wasn’t able to tell him anything he hadn’t already been aware of. It wasn’t taking anything away that he hadn’t been missing so far; not his brother, not his confidence, not the lady, not his triumph, his values, his treasures.

Lately, it felt like Fate was playfully nibbling at him rather than taking everything at once, but the aim was the very same: leaving nothing. He wondered if he had anything else to lose that he wasn’t even thinking of right now. Could one lose their own self while bound by the laws of existence?

His smirk was rather that of a skains-mate; his blood-smeared index finger threatened the reflection playfully, and it winked back at him in the same manner.

“There is nothing you can do to me, my friend,” he or his reflection whispered, and his words glowed up like an incantation, a light dimming the sharp gleam, or just veiling his eyes, cracking the stuffed mud-walls, intent to throw the entire planet off him.

What he perceived next was but a faint memory of an explosion, pressure straining to curl his bones into a marble, and the planet collapsing onto him with its entire weight.

Strangely, he remembered himself standing on an enormous chessboard, treading uncertain on the mismatched squares. His clothes glowed as venom between two armies facing each other. One was clad in crimson and gold, Father towered in the centre. The other was chilled with black and blue, in barbaric nakedness: the King’s eye looked through him like he hadn’t been seen. Each army was missing a single _pawn_ , and there was no sound for him to ask.

His own groan brought his attention back into reality, as he was pushing against the steadily weighing rocks, towards a narrow stripe of light that he hadn’t even realised seeing until now. For no longer than a moment did he muse over the sensation, it was wiser to leave the unsteady heap as soon as possible instead. The tormented growls from the depth urged him on as well: he wasn’t fit for fighting trolls in a narrow place with no escape. Fame be damned. He fought in his own way, and that it involved sneaking around behind the opponent was no one’s business while no one knew. He certainly didn’t care at this point. Why would he have cared for their definitions of valour while he had long not been living in their universe? He _was_ a separate universe. He was Loki. He was different, he was treated different, he felt different, he fought different, and yet he hadn’t been brought down; if nothing else, they ought to acknowledge that.

His laborious surfacing happened in an area devastated by a hurricane: trees lay on the ground like mown reed, like the once-whole corpses mingling with them. The chance to drag up some distressed influential was not within sight.

He couldn’t tell the nature of the force that had passed through here. People were bent and scarce, seeking. He found his fingers comb dishevelled locks backwards before the first looks fell on him, the heel of a trembling palm smeared chilled fluid trickling down his temple as he walked over the rubble. His posture was straight at the dully perceived greetings of nearby folks, unsmiling as it was trait of a grand warrior, his arms raising beside him with graceful diligence to thank the welcome, as if exclusively at request. As if he had been in control of the battle, the world, his entire life.

Thor’s smile at him was quite dim over the crowd surrounding him. He had been celebrated out here; an artefact from the Royal Vault hanging limply in his tired hand. He had clearly done a good job, as did his closest friends. Sif among them, they responded to pats on arms and shoulders with powerless nods and smirks. At the applaud turning towards Loki’s approach, the sorcerer smiled with his jaw tense. Yes, he had collapsed the wing of the troll dwelling that reached into this land. Meanwhile, the Elder Prince and his brothers-in-arm showed a splendid display of teamwork to drive the vile creatures back towards the area they had come from. Fierceness was but a meek hint at the way the maiden had faced the monsters, this land had never seen a woman extort such force.

And then the rush of a welcoming ceremony that echoed through his neglected daze. The content of the resident ruler’s words addressed to him and the rest of the heroes barely even grazed the surface of his consciousness, until he found himself alone with Sif in the roaring silence of a less frequented palace wing – he just recalled her invitation, quiet and brief or possibly not even worded at all, and his own colourless shrug, or lack of. It was the first time of them being in private since the night he’d sent her to the infirmary, he realised.

“Are you well?” she asked of the far-stretching lines of fruit trees in the garden; even the strength of her tone fit the populous audience. So it took a second for Loki to ascertain it was addressed to him, and respond. “As well as everyone else now.”

As she faced him fully now from the root of the column she’d chosen to stop by, her eyes swallowed the lights of the universe that glimmered in her hair. “We all thought you dead.”

Whatever was her point, Loki took out of it what he preferred: acknowledgement of his clever act. “Thank you,” he replied accordingly.

As far as he knew, he was the first to see her weep. The reason wasn’t entirely clear, but the weight of her exhaustion, similar to everyone else’s, was understandable. He stood by the neighbouring column as her forehead leaned to the gold-painted marble and let the tears gush forth. He threw her some generic comfort words, the most he was willing to share with her since she became a part of Thor’s entourage. Honey-sweet nonchalance was his game, several layers of anger between his heart and the world. (At that time, he thought it was the largest amount of anger that could befall someone and there was nothing further awaiting, or at least he wouldn’t feel further layers any more.)

After all, she had stopped being an outcast – pure betrayal.

And then, during this latest trial of courage that threw all of them to the edge of desperation, Thor had earned Mjolnir, weapon of the worthy: Loki’s long nursed fear of his brother being _better_ given shape by a piece of cursed metal.

And he, Loki, earned a foreign king’s warmest praise of his name. God of Mischief: well fitting what he’d been doing and also being uttered by smiles, mocking or amused or sometimes even awing, by others.

And then God of Thunder.

The Warriors Three.

Warmaiden.

As her unasked, half-worded explanation told, she wept for a childish reason, for her separate name; because her excellence was still looked upon as foreign, even though she didn’t fall behind the others; she wept because the obstacle set before her just turned out to be immovable.

Loki knew that the reason for separating her was something else than her gender, but he remained silent about it. It was just gossip anyway; and not to mention he didn’t count among her friends (Did he?), he had no business there to meddle in. If she wept for comfort, she should have wept to Thor the same way she cajoled him during her time in his circles.

He detected her rising anger during their scarce conversation, a promising recklessness, and he held back from warning her against it, somewhat curious and a bit more entertained to see how she’d choose to wreak havoc, or to make a fool out of herself. Her intention to do that made him increasingly fond of her, even. He marvelled with surprised interest at the suspicion that her true, uncontained nature was this similar to his.

“Do you ever feel like, despite all your bliss, this is not where you were meant to be?” she asked in her quiet, soaked voice at one point.

Loki did, he constantly felt that, sometimes he struggled with a straightaway paranoid suspicion that he’d been cast here from a different world, and that Father _knew_.

“No,” he told her from his comfortably separate spot, his tone that of a benevolent teacher. “But you’re a maiden, of course you don’t belong here. What did you expect, that you’ll be drawn into the great dancing circle of heroes after shaming a prince or his gang with your valour?”

He bit his tongue at the unexpected assault on his cheek: a real, open-handed, womanly slap, one that would have made the sturdiest beast reel backwards. With the cool marble steadily holding him up, Loki had time to search the newfound variety of emotions on the maiden’s face. Her breaths and lips appeared to struggle with the amount of words crowding up in her gullet. A minute passed until the battle was finally decided.

“I wish to talk with you later,” she announced, speaking rapidly to veil the shaking of her voice.

A laugh escaped the sorcerer’s lips at the surprising outcome, at her genuine helplessness, a never before seen but long intriguing phenomenon. He let his iron-tasted amusement linger on as she stormed away from the scene; maybe he couldn’t even have stopped the laughter, it welled up and out of him as an even stream long after he was left alone, renewed as he thought of the warrior maiden’s lost composure, her futile attempt to hold back what she had thought to control so aptly.

It was easier in fairy tales than in real life to wish someone well.

That night’s feast, with music and glamour fitting the suave land, was to honour the battle heroes of legends. The Asgardian guests barely had mind to conform with the meek atmosphere; they laughed, drank and danced like it was the end of the world. Loki had great fun with unrepaid mischiefs on select people, too. It felt the most rewarding when it made others laugh at the misfortunate victims.

A pang, a single numb throb cut off by a mild eye roll replaced his scheming smirk when all that crimson caught his gaze. The Warmaiden’s purpose with those drapes was unexpected, still obvious to whoever was sober enough to think – it was Thor’s colour. If the revolt she had forged was to make a bold move at the elder prince, it was one disappointing scene. Woe to the lady, the God of Thunder was too overwhelmed with cheery company and too drunk with the heightened mood to pay the unasked attention. At the same time, the choice fit her straightforward nature, so the sorcerer could well have expected it.

The red drapes held her figure in a loose embrace like a satiated lover, and they left a familiar shoulder completely, irksomely free for everyone to behold. Through that generously displayed skin, it was the first time Loki truly felt that their private little _goofing_ was over. Now, he saw it as it had been: childish, untrained fumbling to mend beginners’ mistakes on the road of improvement. And tonight, wailed his foolish heart, was the milestone indicating the end of that road.

People had been whispering lately that the Queen seemed to be fond of her, and that she’d probably have been glad to welcome her as the next queen; for example, by Thor’s side. Who else’s, really? His Royal Highness the Elder Prince alone failed to take these barely grounded notes and teases seriously, true to the oaf that he was.

Sitting at a table with a view at the entire hall, Loki’s fingers tugged at his own lips while he contemplated the resulting scene. Maybe it would have taken but a little push: a tactical arrangement of a few coincidences, offering a chance for the so desired pair, and they would take it on their own. Or he could set up the exact opposite. He was sure he could have cut this miserable display short either way if he had wanted to; he was a master of shaping people’s intentions, after all, and these two were nothing different. Not in the least. Even now, in her silent rage, she was reaching shamelessly high, just like everyone else did here.

And this should have been enough, an eye roll and private gloat over her continuing spoiled mood. Or perhaps not watching her mood at all. But the sunken night crept on, voices and fists and intentions tangled up in people’s unheeded fatigue, and she took her way towards Loki in her idleness, leaning her back to the wall near his seat. The sorcerer acknowledged her presence with a brief look. Hers was on the ground.

“You’d be bored locked up in the palace,” Loki noted at her voiceless urge to break the silence, while he casually pilfered a bread roll.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you seen the Queen riding out in the front lines for battle?”

“The crown isn’t my ambition, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Not at all,” he was quick to shake his head. “I’m familiar with your ambitions, so don’t mind my babbling.”

“Will you acknowledge them if you’re King?”

He took the time to respond, as if contemplating it: the languid chill in her tone that ran along his spine in a way he hadn’t known before. “How would you want that to happen?”

“By making me your general, for example.”

“That’s quite pinpointed; is that really what you came for back then?”

“A place by the King’s side would bring me closest to it.”

“And if Thor is King, what shall he make you?”

A long silence almost made him believe he had won the discourse, until she moved to sit down opposite him, blocking his view at the centre of the room. “You did notice, didn’t you?” she inquired, still the flatness in her voice; he strived to ignore the idea that it was unusually condescending – that was not like her, it had to be something else.

“Oh, I knew before you did,” he told her easily; a little white lie had never hurt him before.

“I’m guessing you found amusement in letting me give in to an impulse, then.”

“An impulse,” he repeated smirking as he leaned back in the chair and returned her dark, stiff gaze. “Your radiance questions who’s really faulty at your loss, Lady Sif. But for being entertained, I have no excuses. May I possibly offer my aid as consolation?”

“There was a time when I’d have trusted you. You know, to actually want to help me,” she mumbled to the cup a server had just placed before her. “I think I missed the change at one point.”

“All kinds of change are due when people grow up,” Loki informed her.

“But yours… To me, it was…” she appeared more to seek the right words than being afraid to voice her truth. “Tell me, was it a change of your mind at all? Or have you always found me unworthy of your company?”

The prince digested his astonishment with a silent frown. “What exactly do you hold against me? You’ve clearly stated your preference, not even including tonight,” he said then.

“Well,” she breathed faintly, faltering for a second. “Then at least I stated something, unlike you, who does everything to avoid being figured out.”

He chose a smirk to colour his response over the baffled panic, over the perceived contradiction in her. “Honestly, Lady Sif, I fail to see it mattering to you.”

“To me? You’re the one to always speak to me like we’re conversing over a golden fence.”

“You can’t earnestly state I’ve ever maltreated you.” His eyes narrowed as defensive venom spilled into his fangs. “I’ll go ahead and guess the riddle you speak in: what unsettles you is me behaving like a royalty. But what am I to do when I am one?”

She spoke softer next, the sharpness only in her eyes. “You’re a coward, that’s what you are.”

He snorted at the lowly taunt. “It’s because I don’t run after you, is it?” he answered without consideration, his tone smooth but his words increasingly coarse as the trembling in him grew. “How is that me specifically? That’s quite common among these folks; not to pick you, I mean.”

“Perhaps if you’d keep your eyes open, you’d notice how wrong you are, Your Highness.”

“Not to brag, but I can account on everyone’s affairs with all the people they’ve looked in the eye, and you’re not on the list at all, despite your famous _ambition_ ,” he smiled his warmest smile.

“Then you’re just teasing me with holding back your knowledge that it’s due to _my_ decisions. You must be aware that there aren’t many who approach with proper intentions.”

“I understand you desire the standard courting ceremony that’s due for every maiden. But who do you think would be inclined to do that here?” Loki asked, cherishing each drop of ice cooling the unwanted burn inside his veins. “You’ve long scared away all men with common sense.”

Her cup slammed to the table hard unintentionally as she put it down. “What gives you the right to talk to me like that? Have I been blind to your growing into such an arrogant buffoon? You forget-…” Her falter is but a moment but the repetition is a defied urge to step away. “You forget how to treat a lady when out of the battle field.”

So it did get to her. Triumph shivered under his skin. “Indeed, a lady…” he said, elbows on the table as he leaned towards her. “With bloated muscles and the inclination to tear off any excess body parts at the first hint of offence.”

“How dare you? You, especially!” Her tone proved his point more than enough. “Who are you to tell me how to behave while your continuously failed tries can’t make a soul admire you in this entire realm?”

“Take that back,” Loki breathed as it hit him, standing up in unthinking threat. It caused her to do the same, preventing him to tower over her.

But it affected nothing but her motion itself. Her face was scornful as she spat: “You shall take what is your share, make the best of it.” And she was off towards the centre of the music-filled hall with the crimson river swimming after her before the prince would have taken another breath, let alone consider a response.

The flaring chill in his chest at her sudden withdrawal was synchronous with the maiden’s crash into an unsuspecting passer-by.

“There goes a pint, and for what a bargain!” Fandral laughed, capturing the Warmaiden by the waist, a partially spilled cup of beer in his other hand balanced by Thor’s helpful interference.

Loki walked around the table and up to the struggling group with long steps, eyes wide from the plausibility of never having a word from the maiden again. He had wished to give her a glimpse of his torment, not to turn her away infinitely. (The feared tendency was coming true regardless, especially if she did reach Thor in the end, and she would: after all, she was a worthy fighter, she did not falter halfway.)

“I will have you unsay your slanderous lies, milady,” Loki bellowed.

“How come you care now?” she snapped while pushing Fandral away roughly, letting him reel backwards with drunken clumsiness without a glance. “What reminded you suddenly that my belief matters, pray, tell me?”

“Your belief? What have I to do with that? It is in the right place, as always, like you are yourself. Only your vision is distorted, and you ought to better it.”

“Where do you see me be that you hate so much?” she asked firmly over the blond pair’s drunken cackles as they joined their circles not noticing the mood, Thor patting Loki’s shoulder and his hand being swept off.

“Oh, you are very well placed,” Loki repeated, teeth baring slightly; “but there is a limit to your insolence towards your Prince.”

“Where am I placed?” she insisted facing him square, spitting the words in a low tone. “Speak out what you mean, Prince, or your intent to deprave me could go misunderstood.”

“I don’t care to deprave you for your rightful choices, there is nothing uncanny at courting the Elder Prince like everyone does.” She didn’t flinch as he now returned the tipsy man’s shoulder pat, as if presenting him to her, with a tight-lipped smile. Fandral laughed at it and did the same on Thor’s other side.

Loki went on over the charmer’s preparing comment: “All is well here, it fits your goal, because he is carried on people’s shoulders blind to what an oaf he is.”

Thor grinned but Fandral decided to be his spokesman: “He may be an oaf, my friend, but when it comes to clearing the way on the field-“ he started defending his friend, but Sif spoke over him: “You are the one that’s blind, blind to everything but your own single sorrow. Thor is noble and valorous, that’s what people see and admire, and you are afraid of it beyond everything. You think of people’s fondness as direct insults to your person. You fear that showing respect or acknowledging his worth would make you smaller. You’re the one that fails to see how your choice only makes you a coward, nothing else.”

“And what is he then?” Loki spat. “He doesn’t know a law scroll when he sees one, and still…!”

“He has his own values, just like you or anyone else, that is not a crime!”

“This genius took Groot as his elective!”

“What?” Thor snapped up his head at that, words slightly slurred. “You’re the one who persuaded me in the first place.”

“See?” Loki snarled pointing at him, still speaking to the lady. “He’s _this_ much of an idiot, _this_ easy to goad into the grandest hogwash!”

“You showed me all the evidence, brother, there is no taking that back!” said the blond.

“This is what the people have chosen for King!” Bitterness crept up Loki’s throat now, veiled by the forceful laughter with the sentence.

“We’ll see who’s the one laughing at the actual encounter!” Thor bellowed back, ignorant or heedless towards the weight in the sentence. It sounded funny in a grown man’s thundering voice.

“Let it go, Thor, he’s right,” Fandral squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “It was utterly meaningless to learn that.”

Meanwhile, Loki was lightly heaving from the truth said out loud, it was an unexpected explosion in him, and his gaze was interlocked with Sif’s while Fandral soothed the older prince. And the maiden stared back at him wide-eyed, as if she had noticed the acid behind his eyes, or listened enough to actually _hear_ what Loki just said.

And he settled with this, backed out of the battle ground without trading in his torn-up wounds for further vengeance. To succeed at that required more thorough planning, it seemed.

Sif was brave: yes, in war as well, but that unique, peculiar bravery or hers lay in showing her feelings, failures, gratitude, weakness just as much as her strength and valour. It appeared as nothing close to defeat that she caught up to the sorcerer near the line of arched doorways, her open palm avoiding to grab his arm but touching to stop him. He stood dumbfounded and somewhat startled before the motion’s power over his body.

“Dance with me,” she requested then, instead of all else.

A silver tongue included having a feel on when to stay silent. And so, after closing his gaping mouth, the prince turned with a stiff motion and willed his legs to carry him on like nothing had happened. Only, the maiden didn’t seem to perceive the game, because she stepped after him, “Please,” breathing.

Manners kept him from brawling with the persistent maiden for his free will. Frowning lightly, he turned with her onto the dance floor, neither of them smiling while they took up the pace of the music amidst other pairs.

Once again, Loki was the one breaking the silence, his impatience to understand her driving his words. “Bring forth your bargain, milady.”

“Bargain?” The arch of her eyebrows refused to see the point. “What toll do you take for your time?”

“It depends on what you need it for, of course.”

“I wish to know: what are you doing?"

His lips were tight in apparent brooding. "Am I mistaking the dance?"

"No. You're forcing me to say things I dread. Ask questions I dread. Await answers I dread you wouldn't give."

“About the change you believe to have seen? What keeps you still brooding on it after such a long time, after all your choices?”

“There is no choice I made,” said Sif. “You have eyes and ears for these things, you must be well aware of it.”

“I’m aware you’re following the path that people’s tongues have paved for you conveniently.”

“I’ve never been guided by that before today.”

“A mesmerising way to start accepting your offered bliss, then.”

“I made no such choice,” she repeated. “But I don’t owe you this explanation. I’d be relieved to find out what I am in _your_ eyes.”

"Unless I'm King. Then it doesn’t matter whatsoever, does it?”

"That is no proper rejection. Let's end this here. Please.”

"Your words are getting clearer now,” he said and his voice lifted to match the revelation. “So you cannot back up unless I formally send you on your way?"

"Put it that way if you want."

"Is that mercy? Valour? Pity?"

"You have me with resentment in your mind, I could always see that. But it only dawned on me after that perilous night you were in charge of healing me."

"I was not, the healers were," he muttered. He tried to pull out of the floor as tenseness crept into his heart, but she turned along and followed his steps to keep themselves in the dance.

“You’ve had me uncertain for quite a while now. Let it be enough of a punishment for that night. Enlighten me of your reasons, tell me what I am to you.”

“You’re my persistent dance partner. Wearing my brother’s colours, haunting my composure, demanding the disclosure of something vague in your mind. You’re a nuisance. As for the future…” He took her hand, this time unrelenting, and they walked aside from the dance floor. He turned towards her by the wall, breath held in for a second before continuing. “Perhaps not even the Norns assume if you’ll be above or below me, with the scattering mind of this oaf.”

“Stop speaking of it like it’s determined.”

“Your compassion is noble, Lady Sif, but unneeded. You know you can trust me to take care of my own self before all,” he reminded her, and he lifted her hand with a faint smile to kiss it as farewell.

“Yes,” she breathed and took hold of his hand, pulling it back from his lips. “I know you won’t let something like that slide freely.”

Surprise over her insightful comment – no one was to suspect he had _failsafe_ _plans_ , after all – made him follow her pull rather than freeing his three fingers from the cushioned grasp. They strode on the scarcely populated corridor with long steps; her dress was maroon and her free shoulder was ivory in the pulsating light of stars impaled on poles to light the way. She knew him better than he wished, he thought meanwhile, and he felt dismayingly frail while trying to guess her current intentions.

Even more so when she turned back and just kissed him.

Unbeknownst, it was a first for both of them, but she didn’t merely press her lips to his; a hand behind his neck to prevent escape, she pulled him into a lengthy hold, in the shade of a rich curtain, with the melodies of Asgardian Wade faintly humming through the walls. She captured and released his lower lip with a noisy peck. She bit him, though not causing an injury, just teeth running across the lips. As he wasn’t resisting – in all honesty, he had trouble remembering how to breathe, let alone how to choose an action – she licked his lips, his teeth, and that’s when he stirred into the motion. Their breaths pushed against each other, and the unexpected sensation broke the contact.

He compared the swollen redness of her lips to the throbbing of his own. He had a stray thought that people usually smiled after this. But she wasn’t showing a smile, and his had gotten stuck somewhere at the back of his jaw, along with the question he didn’t mean to share.

What are _you_ doing?

His mind dived into guesses with fervour, a defensive clamber for the comfortable ground of pretence control. She was experimenting. She was non-thinking. Perhaps it was her cursed valour: an act of consolation, against his carefully buried fear that he wouldn’t be King and no one ever would acknowledge the loss of his purpose. She could have been attempting to soften him in his destructive resistance against the inevitable. Or perhaps she just wanted to see how he tasted, compared to the one she never got to taste.

Either way, she was dreadful, because she was _inside_ him, knowing or not, willing or not.

It was dreadful as she backed up slowly, eyeing him not warmed but rather cautious, despite being the one that had just intruded and shaken his walls. Misplaced like a capturer running from the captive. Her expression, he thought to read, promised to be back for answers some other time, but no words sounded between them. She separated from him in the simplest manner, without a goodbye even; they could have no idea that this was the last time they’d spend in private for the next aeon.

Coronation Day, already set, was to be announced upon their return home.

-T-T-T-

A thick-furred wolf awaits her, a miniature version of Fenrir so large it hangs off from the cell’s narrow seat in a comical way; huffing lazily in its day-slumber. As she enters, almost forgetting to hide her limping, the animal merely lifts its head, and without opening the eyes, it curls towards the wall to doze on, heedless towards the swarm of ants going on their ways all over the floor and tormenting the resigned beast by crawling in its equally black fur.

Though they mostly remind of the constant pain crawling around in her body, Sif recognises the sorcerer’s theatrical drama about going mad in this tormenting idleness; she wonders if there is anyone in the Universe that could ignore it. Her company is clearly inefficient at passing time, and the notion is rightfully daunting.

“I wanted to help you get out, Loki,” the unnamed tremor inside urges it out of her. “ _You_ are not helping me at it: it’s shame enough that I have to admit this aloud. I’m surprised I still get to visit you at all. Only for now, mind you. Even apart from your past encounter with Earth, you’re not being cooperative right now; you may have noticed that the reception of your rightful disdain is quite unfortunate.”

The canine yawns at the wall in the middle of her monologue, tongue curling up during the process. The unexpected snub catches her off-guard in her gloom.

“Fine, so you’re an instinctual animal,” she derives somewhat irately. “You don’t need help, maybe, I can understand if you just point it out. How about you rage and howl until they take pity and maybe let you out into the wild?”

She would take the hint that there won’t be a discussion today either. She should, that is. But there is the possibility in her tightly clenched jaw that if she gives up on it, Fury will, too. She’s not a slave to the Director, but she is one to her own righteousness. If these humans settle on sealing away the one that tried to destroy their world, she won’t go against it by force, no matter her desire to search the changed look in his eyes; and, however senseless it rings, _letting him down_ like that would haunt her forever.

“The plant is gone, isn’t it?” she wonders, rather than asks; a breath later, however, she decides on the subtly growing anger inside her, and consequently, on the full truth. “It died in the _labs_ where they took it for studying. It was taken away to keep Loki from being in control. No more bargains, they say.”

And with that, they are showing how terrified they are of him. Sif observes it as the contradiction of their latter statement. Loki has revealed the uselessness at the restraints of Asgardian fashion. The Director has admitted the futility of his own attempts to peer into the trickster’s mind. What is it if not an exchange? An exchange without her.

Loki has probably deciphered it as well, the cease of her involvement, and it could well be the reason for no longer interacting with her. He’s had grander purposes than her for ages. Suddenly now, unexpectedly, unprecedented, he’s a giant – or she’s (deliberately) one of the midgets she’s mingling with.

“I’m sure it’s my fault that His Royal Highness refuses me,” she admits with soft scorn. “I am indeed working with his enemies now. He might simply distrust me, but… in case it is something more, he should know I’m sorry about this line-up… Is it? More, I mean; or is he thinking merely in moves and counter-moves?” she feels or imagines her voice tremble slightly at the end, so she puts more force into it. “I’m not sure any more whether I see Loki. I don’t know how to tell. I keep seeing him in ways that might be my imagination. Through all the centuries, I’ve always had this persistent impression that I saw him, which might be a conceited illusion, nothing else. He’s always different, but always the same. It’s confusing to me. I find it hard not to rely on what I think is his transparency.”

With her look on the floor, she reminds herself that there must be a listening ear behind the animal’s even, beastly slumber. It’s been, how many days? Months? She lasted months, that should feel like an accomplishment in itself with the present form of Loki hiding behind the mirage: a completely unknown entity, if she distances herself from the past. With unseen journeys behind him, bent and twisted far away from what she’s blindly arching, seeking for still. Or she was, that is, until it lasted. It may be time to say her goodbye, in case. 

Her sigh is resigned into closing the one-sided chatter. “And what does the God of Mischief miss here the most?”

She waits lengthily, her soul eased somewhat from the mere question itself, relishing the carelessness of the silence between them.

"A bath," he mutters then.

She glances up at his figure sitting there beside the slumbering wolf at the end of the seat, legs stretched out and fingers intertwined on his stomach, not looking up from his reclining posture.

"I'm sure you have your opportunities to clean," she says while digesting her surprise.

"Showers, yes."

“I don’t think it can happen. It sounds like yet another scheme to elope.”

His motionlessness doesn’t reveal his stand about it. He only comes to life again when he looks up at her a thoughtful minute later.

“How about a champagne?”

She shrugs with her good shoulder, notes the flaring interest at the edge of his iris.

“It’s not quite up to me, to be honest.”

“You should really hold your chin higher. Serving Midgard unconditionally, it’s way below you.”

Unconditionally… maybe. She’d be a fool to debate it presently, while she has the sensation of balancing something volatile on her fingertips.

“And deciding on a prisoner’s privileges would raise my status, I presume?” she asks instead, going along with the flow.

“As long as it’s a high profile criminal,” he claims unsmiling, but she detects the impish glint of his eyes looking at her. It definitely doesn’t feel below her to let her resulting smile show.

By the time she leaves, she knows he has a plan. Perhaps he’s forged another one, perhaps he keeps twisting the existing thread, but she’s aware of the change in his attitude either way. She carries subtle delight with her out the manifold sealed door, over the suspicion that he is leaving the box in his mind, ready to busy himself with something sinister again, soon lunging back in the game that’s going on beyond her now, at which she may not be anything anymore, but she certainly has her heart in it. 


	9. Chapter 9

-o-O-o-

It was a high, very high wall that he had precautiously drawn around himself, between him and others, at that crucial time of Odin falling asleep.

“My… friends.”

Under the well accustomed veil of mockery, he had uttered the word to taste it (no, there wasn’t a question in the break, definitely not one he was a coward to ask openly), to ascertain one last time that it did nothing in him, nothing of the previous drop of salt that used to accompany it while it was inevitable to say it. That the word was also over the wall, way out, together with all the valorous knights that came to assault the fort of persistence in a desire to catch his throat in the end. And he felt himself laugh at them from the very core, unseen: harsh, nervous, bitter, burning laughter, dripping with dread and distrust in the fortitude of the wall. After all, these were Thor’s friends; the phrase carried a meaning of power by now. A possible future haunted the back of his mind during their conversation, of them pouring into the fort through his broken wall mile-thick, and plucking him apart piece by piece, word by word, question by question, blame by blame; fast or slow, it didn’t matter; the Warmaiden bearing the sharpest claws against his trembling flesh, and she wouldn’t even know because he’d bite down on his own pain and choke before uttering a cry.

Then, he realised: they meant no harm, they were trying to avoid it, even: to get around him and speak to someone else instead. And he didn’t let it happen. He himself was that stood in their way firmly in defence of his goal, dreading to give them a chance to turn against him and give truth to the haunting thought, meanwhile revealing their indifference towards his toil.

They might not have been aware that a family falling apart was always a world falling apart. The world of everyone part of it. Odin, that self-righteous, cruel man, whom he used to call Father, was battling the ultimate enemy, death itself (Loki had faint regrets about the last words he had sent him off with), and there was nothing he or anyone else could have done any more. Mother, she fought against breaking down. She was strong, wise, powerful, but even so, it took a toll on her, and there was no one able to yield the needed support, not even Loki. Or especially not him. Then, his brother, his loved-hated sibling, everyone’s paramount, the stability he’d been eager to try learning from, had stepped on a wicked path that led far away from here, and Loki…

…Loki, the unwanted successor, took up the task left to him without hesitation. Instead of running after fancies others called right, he sat and poured the majority of his strength into the wall that protected the wretched muscle shivering in his chest, disobeying his mind, his duties towards Asgard, spitting Destiny in the face and ignoring that he was in no place to wail about his own doings, let alone miss someone’s comfort over it. He was on a wicked path himself, only he trod on it with determination.

Whoever Odin had trusted with the secret of his origins would stand against the aptest weaver of stories, forger of schemes; they would be out of the picture before they knew what they were going to say against him. If anyone, then Loki was able to ensure that no word was ever uttered to question his place on he throne. He was safe, his wit his best and only companion. As it had always been - as it would always be from now on.

A Jotun runt... When he found out what he was unbenownst to all, it also struck him that his (unasked, unsought) chance to be anything at all to Sif had never truly existed. But when she stayed behind for a moment in the throne room, Loki expected her to speak with him, a word or anything (confirmation of his vile deed, or even that it was the right thing in a way; confirmation of anything against his volatile state, really); she remained silent, however, her dark eyes seeing through him like she hadn’t found what she sought, or she had found something else that none would need here. He believed to guess where she could, and would, find it; and for a moment, he crumbled under the weight of her telltale look, wishing it far from himself, to meet whatever it was seeking instead.

When the mighty God of Thunder showed softness for the Frost Giants because of the Midgardian lass, Loki had to grin at the hilarity of his choice over what he had and wouldn’t care for here. That his elder brother, the _chosen_ King, could be such a fool sent a surge of insulted amusement through him. It was helpless observation of something he had the desire to interfere but was forbidden by the Norns themselves. He was not a knight to protect the harmed lady’s honour. He never had been. Wouldn’t have been even if she had needed any, he had long grown to know he wasn’t enough for that. He would be for a grander purpose then. He would be for _something_ , surely. He was a king’s son, destined for greatness; and if everything else, that wouldn’t be snatched away.

-T-T-T-

After a seemingly endless haggle over her condition, she gains admittance to the sealed chamber once again.

"I’ve been terrorised," Loki tells her as greeting.

“Have you?” she asks back, more curious than believing.

“Do they know? The one-eyed tyrant? Is he aware?”

“Most likely. If questioning me an hour ago was part of that, they’re already processing whatever occurrence you’re referring to.”

Loki paces in the well lit box seemingly as himself; only the homely Asgardian vest and leather pants reveal it’s a mirage.

“The human sorcerer has entered my cell,” he shares the grievance in a soft, deeply scarred tone as he turns towards her. “I am still perturbed.”

“Humans have sorcerers?” she asks instead of the demanded sympathy.

“Yes, they do; only, their society prefers being blind to such elements.” The pacing recurs, accompanied by wide hand gestures. “Yet here is this pesky little organisation that’s supposed to deal with it, and do they? This is supposed to be a prison. I was implied to be kept isolated here. And then someone just walks in and out at their leisure.”

Sif finds the chair meanwhile without consciously making the decision; the theatrical welcome washes over her intent to hide the crawling ache.

“Did you have to fight him?” she inquires before the gesture would become the centre of their conversation.

“He wouldn’t risk providing me a way out of here through his little plays with dimensions,” Loki shakes his head meaningfully. “He afforded way too much even so. If I’m not allowed to break out, no one should be allowed to break in either. It’s unjust, having me at access like that without handing me a weapon of any sort to defend myself.” He’s overdramatising it with clear intention and pure, undenied pleasure. “This is _my_ cell. My security is compromised.”

“If you’re playing at appearing vulnerable, I’m not sure the Director would take pity on you.”

“He better hasten the case and summon that mage for castigation soon. I will not have some human excuse of a sorcerer _scold_ me for wielding my skills.”

“You got scolded?” The maiden perks up with eyebrows arched.

“Well, he was quite respectful about it,” Loki lulls her less sharply, but then his lips pull into the hint of a snarl again. “With that side of loftiness from the good old times. Sorcerer Supreme, my rump. I never went for such a title, I’m Loki, I don’t play within those binding rules, those… boxes. Those _stairs_.”

His scoff is quiet now while he takes a seat facing the lady; his play is ludicrous, his resentment genuine. His look rests up on her left arm’s cast.

“Why did he come then?” Sif inquires.

“Pettiness, that’s all.”

“About your endeavour with that linen?”

“He kept asking about it, like it was some grand feat,” the sorcerer huffs to himself before his index finger points at her. “Which it was, mind you, at least for someone in this realm. But when he had what he wanted, through my graciousness, it was time to _put me in my place_ , as he phrased it. However, what he meant by it was just empty barking, nothing else.”

“You still got intimidated.”

“No! Only insulted. Deeply insulted.”

“You just said you wished to be armed against such occasions.”

“Because it could have happened. You know my tongue, I should have easily riled him into battling it off, had it not been for my hindering circumstances.”

Sif doesn’t argue, lets him tend to his bristled pride the way he sees fit. “It was a wise choice not to do it nevertheless,” she points out instead.

“Says who?”

She takes a moment to digest the unexpected question before responding. “Myself.”

“A very untrustworthy source.”

“How so? I don’t battle unnecessarily.”

“Oh please,” he chortles gesturing towards her ghastly carcass. “Only a fool would follow your guidance. A halfwit. An imbecile.”

“As would only a fool trust your definition of one.”

“Do you regard your action as wise, then?” He inquires in a lighter tone, with his fingers loosely intertwined between his knees.

“You wouldn’t know what was going on there. I was-”

“-the only hero there far and wide, I get it, we’ve been over that. Do you still regard it as the right way? Do you never have a moment’s regret during all this toil? Even knowing you’re going to die?”

She drops her gaze just in time to miss his expression during the last sentence, so she wouldn’t know whether he’s being honest or lying blatantly for his own gain. It’s a notion of revolt against his self-righteous control, an anxious hold on what’s hers and only hers to choose. Silence stretches with her search for a divertive response, and his boots walk up to the glass rustling.

“You’ll die, Sif,” he repeats through a tightened jaw, his insistence a repeated assault against her composure.

She blinks fast against the urge to look up at her conversation partner and licks her lips instead of swallowing, although it leaves her throat dry and her voice slightly cracked. "Back in my youth, I believed heroes are never afraid," she tells him the first thought that filters through at last.

"You acted it out well. You still do. You haven’t a distant idea when cowering away is replaced by tactical retreat."

“It leaves people to die all the same.”

“Who was your opponent serving?”

“You know I won’t chatter with you about that.”

“Fine. You’re wearing colours now; this progress is an unearned gift to my eyes.” She's wearing a light falling tunic over her dark shirt, knee-length and buttoned all the way, easy to slide into with an aching body, bravely melting from turquoise into maroon. “At last, there’s hope you’ll go down in beauty that matches yourself.”

“Stop talking about that,” she spits before she could halt the burst; she stands up while her look fixes on his face. “Whether I live or die is _none_ of your concern.”

She regrets pressing the word so clearly to show how affected she is, but it’s too late; his fist moves away from the glass wall it's been pressing to, his tone is both triumphant and condescending. “There it is," he breathes. “I was beginning to think you don’t cling to your life like all living beings should."

"You've had your say in it," she presses.

"Acknowledge it, Sif, it’s a valid urge. My offer still stands. Take my help. A way out, it’s all I need, and I’ll hasten to find you.”

“You would, wouldn’t you? Unless it bends your neck, unless it hurts your pride.” The long swelling dam has thinned, it seeps through unstoppably now. “You had your chance, God of Mischief, and you’ve missed it regally. Deliberately. I won’t have your pity as some crooked exchange. Stay on your own business as you always do, and I shall stay on mine. No more words on it, or you won’t see me again.”

A rash thing to say, she realises immediately; bold and naive to believe it affects him, even more foolish to show it. Again, she could probably count on one hand all the things she was able to hold in during her life, but it doesn't console her at the moment while her raised chin bravely holds to the words she can't make unsaid.

With looks intertwined, his eyes venom dark, he takes a languid step back and sports a smirk that’s far from surrendering, even though she feels the air around him rather artificial. “I’ll be here if you change your mind. Or when they do, once you lose yours. _If_ , that is – sorry.”

She knows her defeat already and drops her gaze once again despite the ire humming inside at his impudent wording, at his purposeful tapping away on a sensitive spot. A continuing futile debate would only postpone her well craved rest in privacy. Thus, no longer mindful to camouflage her pained bearing, her free hand digs in for her phone. Her own voice clings dully in her ear as she speaks. “I bring an electronic message from Thor once again.”

Lips tight in disinterest, his only response is the venom green eyes resting up on the flat device in her hand. She doesn't waste time going through with the previous tampering in the opposite wall but presses the screen up to the glass just as listlessly. He bends down slightly to get a better view at the slightly blurred photograph of a tower. The structure seems quite common to Sif, at least on Earth; there are memorials of both intricate and coarse working scattered in every city. The badly imitated old Norse writing rambles about shreds of a story, most of the visible parts emphasize its ancient quality. The stone-carved image the photographer chose to record depicts a figure crooked, bony and clawed, with an eight-legged horse blending into the artistic mess of a background behind it. She recognised the symbolic form of Sleipnir at first sight, but the horns on the central figure only made sense with the runes ( _Loki_ ) framing the picture. The connection between the two characters, however, remains a mystery to this day.

Not to the trickster, it seems: he laughs aloud shortly, although only to himself, but it breaks up his sullen demeanour. Sif observes his reaction throughout above the phone, the lingering smile that he makes effort to reduce and that creeps into his eyes without asking for permission, coloured like the sunlight intruding the ocean’s surface; and she finds she would be ready for certain compromises in exchange of learning the tale of this image if offered the chance.

"I didn't expect it to be this amusing, to be honest," she endeavours half-heartedly.

"It's just a well constructed lie from our youth, no more," he shakes it off briefly and keeps the memory his own.

After getting home that evening and stumbling onto the coach with the renewed ache, she sends a short message back to Thor; following the method they learned early on from the character limit and people’s scolds, choosing only the most necessary words instead of formalities.

_You got through._

_Through what_ , comes the answer shortly.

_His skin._

_Happens._

She smirks while lowering the multifunctional device of earthen communication in her lap, and contemplates the quiet hum of tension inside herself. Is it irritation? At Thor’s nonchalant reaction, or at the fact that he did get through? Without even being present in the younger prince’s life, as she’s suddenly just realised? Irritation, despite her denial of the desire (hope) to reach anywhere with the god of mischief? It’s quite surreal in the present situation. Perhaps it’s because she hasn’t gotten ahead at her appointed task with all the effort she’s put into it. And then Thor goes and does what she should have by the flick of a finger. Maybe Thor should just get his royal hind to the city finally and take care of his brother. And all other responsibilities resting on his shoulders, for that matter. How many years has it been? Enough for the warmaiden’s patience to wane. Not enough for her to take action. It’s not her business to meddle in, she reminds herself. Even if her graceless toil at this meagre place lengthen because of Thor’s reluctance to return. She wonders why she’s the only one bothered, why everyone else she knows seems to settle in just fine like it’s always been their goal to end up on this planet. What the hell is wrong with her?

Lately, she’s been hurting too much to do anything else than lounge atop various cushioned furniture when out of duty, her head buzzing with the distant ruckus of motoric vehicles filtering through the glassed windows. Most human-made medicaments have proven to be inefficient against the pain. Some did ease it, all of them inserted in form of venal treatment, but those kicked too hard: they made her drowsy and careless towards anything in the world, and that’s still frightening when she looks back, the lack of control over herself, the unwilled shift in her attitudes, values, priorities. So she firmly refuses them now each time she’s offered.

Swiping her thumb over the screen, she browses through photos in the thickening dark; today’s cursed dialogue lingers around as a sensation that she might be seeing these faces for the last time. (But he was lying, wasn't he? Was he? He wants to use her to get out. Her enfoced dismay must be his failsafe plan.) They have aged. Some facial expressions have shifted or sunk, and the camera light does the strangest work on people’s eyes. Some grins and frowns have remained the same throughout the centuries, and their familiarity stands out in the foreign environments they’re placed in.

Some pictures of Thor have carried messages that were clearly written by foreign hands: his Midgardian lady doesn’t seem to retain the forms of respect common in Asgard’s society. But her intention is good, the messages and photos sent by her from Thor’s device aim to reassure the audience that the thunder god is doing fine, the accompanying texts hint at him being taken good care of. It’s a peculiar display of appreciation towards his old friends. Sif can tell she has a kind heart: a fine companion for Thor at these times.

And then Thor himself: his habit of sending anything at all was not present at the beginning, so it’s also proof that he’s gaining back his soul, his less bitter humour, perhaps the love for life. The warmaiden tends to wonder if it’s plausible, the hope on him becoming the same blend of power and warmth he used to be, someday. 


	10. Chapter 10

-o-O-o-

He’d have carved out his eye for a drop of water on his tongue, nourishment for his diminishing perception of reality.

He still had the mind to cherish what he got instead: every direly needed second of this short break. He had willed his parched body to remain leaning to the wall, a shallow dent on the ravaged metal cosily bending around him and yielding a faint sense of protection. The chains were long enough to lay his head down if he wanted, to keep his limbs in a comfortable position, to have a chance to defend if he was strong enough. Such willed struggling entertained them more, he had derived. He forced himself to breathe his rage out quietly: too much noise could call attention sooner.

Sleep was a luxury he couldn’t imagine any more, but he did everything else to get rest when an opportunity arose. He was growing weaker with every celestial day of this blue-brown-grey stone realm, but he wasn’t giving in to exhaustion just yet. That would have meant giving in to the ache that strained to worm itself into his mind and take over. It would have been too much pleasure for _them_ ; they could take to the taste of his wailing and keep him alive for an eternity. He wouldn’t have that. He couldn’t afford that. He was born a king, not a slave to anguish and fear and peering minds and seeking claws and teeth and laughter and goading and the fire and the whimpering, he wasn’t whimpering, someone else was inside him, after all, he was here at this very moment and not scattered minutely over a gazillion moments in time, he was not snarling or begging or hissing or bargaining or demanding or appeasing, just quietly breathing through his nose and not rocking back and forth like a sulking child, he wasn’t the one hammering the back of his head into the wall so the sharp pain would jerk him out of the spiral, which wasn’t his either, he was born a king, someone else was shaming himself in his body. His thoughts were very clear and logical, he knew he needed to rest up now while he could (although he had trouble telling _when_ exactly this fidgety, restless _now_ was), and that he had to stay immensely aware of his surroundings afterwards to grasp signs and hints, the puzzle pieces for escape, this way or that. He had the wits for it, he was Loki, born a king, God of Mischief, master of scheming. Only, there hadn’t been enough time so far; he had met levels of blinding pain he hadn’t thought could be inflicted without the mind breaking contact with consciousness in defence. Sometimes he even cast an illusion on himself unwittingly, as his mind escaped reality on its own. That was bothersome; the waking, that is. But he didn’t know how to counter that. He had clearly learnt something wrongly from those convenient textbooks – oh, the books, the rooms, the nights, the days, the sunlight, Mother, oh, Mother ( _you came for me_ ), find him with your mind, reach out to your never-had son, hope on his life, don’t let go, seek the void with your manifold powers, Mother, please- No, not the wish, a wish misguided and tormented; the room, simply the room, that did good, it used to work well at soothing him. It was set and existent. It had scents: dust, metal, incense, formalin, mercury, sometimes wet textile, burnt parchment. It had colours: yellow pages, encased covers, speckled marbles, looming night’s blue, afternoon’s grey, heated gold and frozen ash. It had sounds: skull-bursting roar of silence with none around, delicious tearing of aged parchment by thieving fingers, fidgeting of hungry insects, approach of steps (Mother’s was never heard): dutifully rhythmic, slow and strolling, heavy with wobbling fat, or thundering hurriedly amidst the bellows for a sibling.

Thor, you conceited non-brother, with the proud sting of blue in your eyes, you deserter, sabotager, traitorously-king, sitting down on the golden throne at this very hour: no one was around to spoil Thor’s big day now, was there? Sit in that throne and keep looking ahead as you always do, always forward, never think back, never remember, never search. Find another one that would straighten your arrogantly carved paths, until it wound out of control and led all to demise along with you. Who would follow you there? Would you still have friends by your side, or would you have sent them to their ruin by then? Could your imbecility grow so high that they abandoned you, or would they prove their presence worthier than valour, their bond stronger than blood?

Would _she_ be the one to wed you in time? Could you ever be as good to her as good she is, the most deserving Queen of Asgard?

How small these past torments looked from this far, how unexpectedly shallow and insignificant. He craved it painfully now: being there to behold the two becoming one, having the last shreds of his own connection to her break apart with the softest gentility of rising pain; and himself growing backwards, into the libraries’ dim silence, for plotting shrewd hindrances on their reign; he would comfortably sink into the soft mass of hatred while she fully unfolded in her curves and the dark of her iris and the mist in her voice and the clarity in the working of her mind, and he would thicken the colour of his curses to balance out the scathing injustice, and secretly, he would watch her glow.

His thoughts broke apart into an array of stars; they danced before him while he fell. It was so much like space. He had fallen through space once, felt like an eternity, and later he came to wish it had been. Now he had the exact same desire; except everything was a light-aeon faster: his flight, his pulse, his waking breaths. His body was a step ahead of his perception: he was being carried, and his captors, each dragging him by an arm, were in an unceremonious hurry.

He was lifted high for a moment, and then the ground slammed into his knees sharply, oh, damn it, not the knees, he didn’t kneel, he was born a king, he wouldn’t kneel, who was he meeting anyway? (He should have glanced in the mirror before–) Someone new, most likely, no one here had stood out from the vile mass so far.

“Is he yielding?” rumbled the question, and then Loki knew he had heard it countless times before; his failed attempts to look up – his own body forbid – reminded him it wasn’t the first encounter, not even the second, only he strained to forget it as soon as possible.

“Here he is at your service, Father.”

Loki snorted at it – at least he tried, spitting drops of blood meanwhile, and the faint hiss leaving his witlessly trembling lips went unheard or unheeded.

“Be careful with your methods. If you destroy him, I’ll kill you.”

“I beg you to trust my skills. Have I ever failed you? I promise you he’ll be at his best when the time comes, and he’ll crawl at your feet for a blessed chance to be of use to you.”

“I don’t need another mindless scum!” the response thundered around the hall high an wide. “I need his powers and wits, not his body!”

“And you shall have it.”

“When is he ready?”

The question, or the word, sent a shiver through him. The idea that all the turbulent, humiliating, senseless mess had a purpose, a direction. There had been a time when he thought he was chaotic; now he felt all his ambitions naïve and infantile.

“With your permission, Father, I see you’ve successfully obtained the container for the Stone. Why don’t you try him right away?”

Instead of an answer, a mountain rose and heavy steps approached.

Pushing against the dread that he refused to own and that froze deeper and deeper inside his bones, chanting _run, run, run_ , he braved a look up.

The blue glow, that’s all he saw. It drew his look to itself and blinded him with its peculiar light. He shivered as it wormed its way into him, warming the walls of his parched veins like a living parasite: a healing stream of conviction. As if waking after a nightmare of being someone else, he suddenly saw the way out.

He was ready.

He ignored the fine tremor in his hands while, in a ceremoniously meticulous pace, he put pieces of his old attire in place in the privacy he’d been afforded. The protective bits had been repaired, occasionally redecorated; the undershirt, the fine linen was entirely new, reeked like Svartalfheim. Each familiar piece of metal and manifold layered leather repulsed his skin through the fabric. The attire pulled his aching spine down as he walked forth with foreign steps; his worn muscles could carry the thinned body but weren’t used to all this garment. And he welcomed this first trial of many upcoming: a new dawn promised to befall his night.

-T-T-T-

"My hospitality didn’t exactly go answered," Fury announces to the Frost Giant sitting straight on neatly arranged fur in a throne of gold-stained ice. Whether he recognises or cares what he sees, his demeanour doesn’t reveal to the captive.

“If it was indeed meant seriously, it went quite the wrong way,” Loki replies, careless to raise his tone above a mutter. A gossamer of ice glints on the naked skin like it was glass, crooked and bent as it follows the grooves in the roughly formed bone structure. Frost flowers keep growing at the edges of the transparent barrier.

“You forget too easily then, or you naively think I had no say in allowing you readings or giving you a chance with your Egyptian bullshit.”

“You didn’t let me finish that.”

“Oh, you meant to finish it?” The man’s surprise is almost believable with the excess amount of fervour in it. “My bad, didn’t mean to be too smart for the joke.”

“It was meant to help you,” the blue creature sighs tormented.

“It was a tomato plant,” Fury thunders humourlessly.

Loki’s eyebrows arch and he leans forward on the fur slightly: “That’s right. Its juices would have been the perfect aid for your aging skin.”

“Mockery won't get you ahead with me, trickster."

“Do you deny your passed-on craving for eternal youth, Director Fury? Your greed for what’s not to be found in your kin’s tiny habitat?”

“There’s no news in your mighty underestimation of my _kin_ either. We’re finding the way to prevail in any given situation, our people study whatever has the qualities we need. Did your Chitauri do that?”

Still unmoving, Loki chuckles dryly through his teeth again, and the expression makes his silver-blue face a replica of his Aesir form. “You mean to know if they’ve tried stealing genes from lobsters?” he inquires, his voice closer to a hiss than genuine cheer, or just vile humour.

“I see you subscribed for _National Geographic_ during your last visit here,” the man derives. “Well, now we also possess a crafty magician with the skill to resurrect a bunch more times than necessary. It’s a matter of time till he starts answering questions about his little trick with that ancient hocus pocus, until we can safely derive that it was the cheapest prank.”

The Jotun figure’s head shake is subtle, could be but a play of the imagination. “It was dark magic, not something to meddle in unless you’re ready for heavy sacrifices. Humanity isn’t: it’s proven in their tooth-gritting hold on the illusion that every life is equal and precious.”

“Please, have my silent pity in response, and let’s move on to the matter at hand.”

“Your life is too short, your world too narrow to see beyond insignificance. I would not try to convince you, nor delve into such fruitless debate."

"You'd rather I filed you among the cases where negotiation is impossible?"

Though Loki is silent for a moment and his expression unrevealing, the air around him feels amused. "How do you commemorate those I have killed?" he wants to know. "A statue? A memorial? A list of names carved on a pedestal? An annual ceremony?”

“Respecting the fallen is what you bring up against us? I doubt it's a condition of your knowledge to discard your dead like rubbish."

“Is there a museum showing off the horrors I have brought upon the people?”

“Would you take a stroll in it? Do you miss the great adventure of crushing ants?”

“I’d compare it with other pedestals of terror caused by humans. See what grudges people have kept, whose loss they’ve stepped over with ease.”

“No one’s loss is stepped over here.”

“Not even that of your disposable squads, Director?”

“That’s not for you, or even me, to judge.”

A corner of the Jotunn’s thin lips pull into a smirk. “I don’t know what to answer to that. I expected your angelic denial, which then I could accuse of hypocrisy.”

“We were at the plant,” Fury circles back while engaging in a slow stroll before the cell. “You were going to share what you’ve been doing with it.”

“In fact, I was going to inquire about my security, rather. Have you bettered the fault in your system, so I can’t be bothered in my correctional recluse again?”

“It burns, doesn’t it?” Fury smirks, not caring to hide his dark amusement in sake of a greater impact. “Knowing there is someone mightier than you and not even hunted?”

"You should be careful of those who see what you don't. You can't predict when a relevation turns them against you or your entire world."

"Thank you, but I choose who to trust without counsel."

“Come on, it must be eating you inside, too,” the giant figure pushes, his head lowering a tad for a deepening look. “Someone has effortlessly walked through all the barriers and seals you’ve set up. Or walked around them, rather. And it’s someone whose powers are so similar to mine. If you don’t show wariness of me seeking the same route out, I’ll start suspecting you have some kind of a trap waiting for me. Has the sorcerer apologised, at least?”

“He denied having a reason to. He didn’t practically remove you from the cell. Nor did he enter it, in fact, since he kept floating in his own little space thingy.”

“So no recompense for me then,” Loki bites his lips disappointed.

"I'm intrigued, nevertheless," Fury admits facing the cell again with chin raised; "how, behind this cheap scoffing, you're concerned with what is or isn't harmful for us. Is that your genuine caring side, say, or is it a legacy of your family, the will of your brother, perhaps father?"

"There is no father you're entitled to name," the Jotunn spits suddenly, the burst unexpected for both of them. The frost flowers crawl around the edge of the transparent barrier slowly like flat, ornamental spiders.

"I didn't _name_ any," says the man unfazed by the rigour, "but I’ve gratefully noted this being a sensitive spot for you."

"As is the Titan for you.” It is but a careless whisper in conviction of superiority.

"It's a suicidal bullet and you know that.

"Want to test that claim right away?"

“I believe we’re already past the testing phase; although I get why you’d be eager to pretend I didn’t watch you hyperventilate from a set of medical restraints.”

“Your choice of such inflated words betray how eager _you_ are to enlarge your meagre triumph.”

“Oh, I am,” Fury nods in emphasis. “I’m thrilled to have your control panel in my hand at last, with all the necessary buttons.”

“One button that leads you nowhere you’d enjoy,” Loki lets him know with a helpful intent. “If you believe it does, it must be because you’ve only seen humans take torture before.”

“You took the mere implication of it with a child’s obedience that’s taken to the dentist. Our computers revealed your panic; they don’t give a shit about your witty commentary. They’re a trustworthy ally against a liar of your kind. They told me how you’d have run, run as far from that room as you could have, if given the chance.”

The sorcerer's form is a statue framed by the ever-changing frost in increasing contrast with the dimming air of the cell . “Even a child has the mind to override these primal warnings. Your observation is useless to your purpose.”

“It is, isn’t it? That’s why you’re in this big ass form now: to represent your superiority, and not to counter your pitiful reaction to a hint at torture.” Fury laughs quietly at the dark winter afternoon. “I may not be a super-being like you think you are, but I have the tools to make me one against your kind. I constantly measure the truth or lie of your reactions, whether they’re chosen or genuine. For instance, I know the temperature in your cell is unchanged despite this façade. My tools see you behind the illusions you set up, they record you from your hunger to the rate at which you change air inside your lungs. Your body heat increases when the Lady Sif is visiting, did you know that? I know why you tactfully avoid mentioning her and reveal your interest in her fate, even though you’d probably tear my throat out at first opportunity. I see into the maze of your mind more than you like to know.”

“And so much less than you comfort yourself in believing,” Loki breathes in a tone unfazed by the challenge.

“Oh, I’ve figured you out for a while, pretence god. You speak through these illusions, at or against your will. Right now, you’re confessing to me how mortified you feel that you gave in to fear of me for a moment.”

“And in exchange, I was yet again convinced that you mean to keep me well. Why, however? What could possibly be the reason you’ve spent all these months appeasing _me_ , of all else?”

Fury laughs heartily to himself, then up at the pale mirage through the ever-moving frost flowers scattered increasingly over the barrier. “Appeasing you? Now, _that_ is unexpectedly bold,” he comments when he deems the message clear enough.

“Humanity has the ancient practice of gaining the favour of gods in dire times," the sorcerer explains unfazed, his tone drifting with light mockery behind the seriousness. "It's their trump card. You think I wouldn’t recognise the pattern? Or anyone of my kin, for that matter? Midgard’s dwellers are young and small; their ways are observed easily from the surrounding branches."

“Your observations are from the old times. Humanity as a whole has stopped relying on higher blessings by now: we’ve taken our fate in our hands, we rise from the mud those gods wanted to keep us in, with our own creations.”

A smirk, breathy and amused, precedes the answer. “It is truly admirable how much humans who lack all the physical, mental or spiritual capacity are able to realise without magic and its falsely categorised relatives. They sure make a lot of tools for everything. They haven’t relied on their own bodies or psyche for that purpose for millennia. No wonder they deteriorate so fast; even less so that they keep this conceited and blind to the battle of dominance going on right above their skies."

“Are you implying we are meant to play bottom at the universal ‘big fish, small fish’ game?”

“Oh, no, you’re still young enough and enjoying the protective watch, the intangible power of initial growth. You are a darling among the eight other realms. No one but Odin would have known why the world tree nurtures you in the very centre.” He takes back the upper hand with the utmost nonchalance, but so does Fury receive it.

" _The intangible power_ must be a bitch then cause we sure got bashed a lot in the past few millennia. If you’d have read some real science when you had the chance, you might have derived how bitter we are about the gods’ supposed work. For that matter, you should have fought your own battle with eyes open in 2012. If trouble arises, we do what we can by ourselves: appeasing isn’t trendy any more.”

“Why, but you _have_ been very soft on me, Director,” Loki mutters with pretentious meekness framing his words. “Has my subdued condition, then, appealed to your hunger for superiority? Do you get benevolent with those you see below you? I’d have gone for this at the start, had I known.”

“You’ve got it slightly miscalculated, god of vile wits. Even if I sought the mercy of someone over the clouds, I’m not a dumbass to pick the least cooperative guy from the entire pantheon.”

“That makes it even funnier how, each time I’m imprisoned to keep away from the world, that very society becomes desperate for my aid.” Loki notes with sweet scorn.

The Director is silent for a minute, the dark eye alone reveals he’s not getting affected by the taunt. “How are you coping with your new restraint?” he inquires instead, earning the arch of an eyebrow, mild pout of thin lips.

“A little itchy, some breathing problems, nothing serious.”

“You must be eager to find out what it can do.”

“In the implausible case that it stays on while I break out of here, it might be wise to know beforehand.”

“Well, I'll let you know beforehand that there is no specific tool for removing it without penalty.”

“Penalty?” the Jotunn figure repeats with crimson eyes narrowed curiously.

“You’ve gotten but a glimpse of it after your waking. You haven’t touched it since, even though that little sting can't have hurt you for real. Not much up for experimenting, I reckon.” The man returns to his authoritative stroll. “I understand your irritation, pretence god. Unlike your old cuffs, this thing is inseparable from you and keeps you under constant check. Every flicker of your magic is monitored, to say the least. The device-”

“-keeps my seidr on a leash? I figured. Is this the central spoils from your relation with New Asgard, or was it just secondary barter?”

“Indeed, your people wield some handy technology. What you might appreciate knowing is that your new ornament is adjustable. Your powers are nullified each time you leave this cell.”

“Sounds like we could turn it into a fun game," the sorcerer concludes, with hushed excitement in his voice. "Let’s say my level of cooperation is directly connected to that switch. If we’re simplifying it to Midgard’s numeric system, the level changes, say, at every fifth of the scale. The catch is that above a certain level, I slip out of your control, but you can’t know where that line is. And then, each time you turn the knob to 0, my compliance drops to the level of _su-_ ”

“No need to get riled up,” Fury interrupts in a patronising tone and palms opened, pacifying. “It’s only on zero as long as you’re out on your daily necessities. With the conditions unchanged, you get to keep your full powers to play inside the cell. Plus, if you find the switch, in theory, I mean, you get to control it yourself. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“You’re the switch, aren’t you?” Loki guesses impassively.

“I’m flattered to be your first guess.”

“You could hide your grand ego better from now on, it helps with a mystery like that.”

“In the meantime, the entire organisation is me. Keep that in mind while you insult the cleaning staff," Fury requests while heading to the exit. "Enjoy it while you still have the time to play around."

The giant grins at that, crusty and blue; thin frost flakes crumble off his cheeks as he does so.


	11. Chapter 11

-o-O-o-

He was flustered. He spoke tactlessly, said things unfitting for his position, knew each retort to his cheeky comments before they came. Like he'd just noticed himself from outside, guided by a far less attentive auto-pilot. His scornful mockery of the most favoured Avenger earned him the silencing muzzle by the time his mind cleared of the sapphire mist of spite. He was still only a co-pilot at most, as he found in himself a misplaced relish of the figures around him forming an ever-prepared barrier, and the activating security locks, the claim of the handcuffs. He knew it was just comparative comfort, but it was wind-down nevertheless: his job undone but finished, the battle decided, the hassle over, the wheel out of his hands. It had been a long year.

In the alleyway later, he stared at passers-by out there over the trash bins while tirelessly grinding his chains to the edge of Mjolnir. Though the attempt to break them and escape was futile, skipping it would have been like stopping to breathe: pointless and self-destructive. Part of the chain was stuck under the immovable hammer, as Thor had left him, with the unasked promise to bring his brother some sustenance upon his return. Eyebrows expressed how meagre Loki’s interest was in the matter, but it couldn’t unfaze the self-satisfied God of Thunder.

His arms growing weak, Loki leaned back to the wall with a huff, his legs carelessly stretching out at Mjolnir’s two sides. He observed the stained red brick wall across the pavement, and the tossed bed-linen at its base, surrounded by boxes like a child’s fort built for playtime. He wondered if someone actually lived in it. He fiddled around with knives, producing and hiding them with light flicks of his wrists; but when needed, he could do the same with just fingers, the twitch of a shoulder, a fake sneeze, a drop by pretentious clumsiness. He wondered if he was being observed by his captors through human technology. He displayed the shining blades with boastful tactlessness, browsed through them meticulously to choose the one he would stab Thor with at the next opportunity. He made up scenarios for it in his head. He devised ways leading up to them. He wished it to be an impeccable replica of an accident: he already bore enough crimes to be confronted with soon.

Asgardian justice? Odin knew no mercy at that. Although he might as well have some for his son, if he had claimed him so boldly back then right after the truth was out. Now should be the time when the King’s word was tried.

Muffled laughter broke out of him at that. He was weaving fables, fairy tales. He wouldn’t anger Thor further under the present circumstances, and Odin… it was never clear if he had lied or not, if he’d lied but believed it to himself, like that note, the most evident means to appease at that moment.

_You’re my son._

_What more than that?_

_A relic._

_A token._

_Triumph._

_Mercy._

_Tool._

_Vengeance?_

He startled awake, reality took its time replacing the dangers in his conditioned imagination. Mjolnir was gone, Thor was kneeling before him and holding his forearm to stir him awake, the other figures surrounded him in a tight circle. There were some edible earthen goods wrapped in thin bread in Thor’s free hand.

“Eat this, brother; you’ll have plenty of time to rest when we’re home.”

Loki jerked his head away from the hand reaching for the muzzle: because it wasn’t home where they were heading, and because he couldn’t have stuffed down a bite after all this time.

Barton took up the task of consuming Loki’s shawarma on the way to the appointed square.

The two gods trod along the Rainbow Bridge on foot like an abandoned procession. Thor had taken off the muzzle while only Heimdall saw him gagged like that, but no words sounded between them even afterwards. The hand engulfing Loki’s upper arm felt too large and way too steady. Loki wouldn’t turn his head to see his sole companion; he considered it stubborn rejection to acknowledge whatever reactions he’d have deciphered there. And he was suddenly feeling so, so tired. Perhaps that’s why Thor was in no hurry to cross the bridge either. Or maybe, just maybe, he knew that Loki would not enjoy a walk outside again.

In the court room, he glanced around during his walk-in to detect who was interested in his fate, only to keep his gaze firmly and solely on Odin afterwards. There were several soldiers, and Mother. The list ended there. The King wouldn’t allow anything to try and sway the righteous dealing of justice. He intended it swift and straightforward. So Loki would be then: he didn’t want the hassle to drag on either, so he spat everything he had into Odin’s face without beating around the bush. And it did good: after a ludicrous clash of wits (meaningless and hollow, he insisted in his mind), he earned the predetermined sentence without delay.

-T-T-T-

They’re having that champagne together. In fact, the drink isn’t the only thing; they also share the room, one surrounded by the familiar barrier. A haughty mind could easily interpret the scenery as a confession: that the rigid effort to keep the God of Mischief in solitary confinement is but a ridiculous formality. He’s slumped in a plastic-framed armchair, she’s hunched up in the middle of an operating table, somewhat ravaged, her cardigan pulled tightly around her torso; tall glasses held limp among their fingers, the maiden’s empty and Loki’s half-filled. With gazes lost in unseen distances, they’re both recuperating.

He’s still not looking at her. His tight-lipped silence over the glass tells about a mighty grudge.

Sif has no power to push against it for now. From the moments of her crude waking, she remembers Loki bent over her expressionlessly – the lights along the ceiling corners were casting a shadow of age over his form, which he has lost again since he moved. He had performed the miracle without a word, without so much as an acknowledgement of her return to life, let alone his own triumph; that lent her the faint sensation of being an object, or someone’s dying pet.

It lingers on, as she assumes that letting her recover with the trickster’s aid was a gesture of lenience from SHIELD – like she’s really below them, serving them, putting herself at their mercy out of some ill-considered benevolence, just as Loki said. Then, as a consequence of her decision, Fury had no choice but to give up an overvalued asset: his snippet of control over the God of Mischief. She knows by now that no such loss is tolerated by the Director, however meagre. And as for Loki, his current attitude speaks for itself: when time ran out, he resolved to retrieve her from the near-dead without naming a condition. Well, not any that she knows of, at least.

This day marks a failure for all three of them. Possibly a triumph, she thinks with faint hope – nullification of a bargain that wasn’t leading anywhere. Maybe an unworded ultimatum, which he understood: his chances for reasoning, privileges or release depended on his choice at that moment.

But these are all her own fancies. What has this act of compliance really made Loki in their eyes now? What has it made _her_ in his eyes?

A fool, as his grudge indicates. And how far is he from the truth?

To answer, pain throbs dully in her bones: imagined traces of a foreign entity having crawled through their soft caverns. Not that she’d have noted if something inside her had come to life for real, she was nearly… insentient through the latest hassle; at least she can’t recall where she was last before she drifted away from her consciousness, except for scattered moments of ruckus around her. She remembers the more clearly a hostile stranger’s hand rummaging through her insides, heedless of her protest, heard or not. The dreadful sensation of her organs being spooned out one by one is sharply engraved in her memory for now. The following emptiness among her ribs left her in a dumbfounded stun, in the belief of perceiving every bit of reality, until she heard herself gasp for a breath and everything fell back to normal. She does not wish to relive this day, even if it’s the one on which she healed from weeks of torment.

“I’m sorry for the trouble you had to go through for me,” she sends across the chasm he makes her imagine gaping between them.

“It was a great opportunity to experience the boundaries of this human miracle,” he says to the mirror wall, the lenience of his words killed by the chill in his tone.

“The microchip?” she inquires sympathetically, almost ashamed in place of Fury and his men; meanwhile, the word rolls as comically on her tongue as foreign is the technology to her mind.

"This little disk in itself is nothing. It hasn’t been planted deep. These humans, they're laughably meek in their ways. They hold such things for torture, control, captivity."

"It doesn't rely on sheer force, that one thing I understood.”

"It takes a little tug, nothing more." He lifts his hair and his other hand reaches for the back of his neck; three fingers hook around an area over his intact skin for demonstration. "Some electricity, I judge, a little blood. No permanent paralysis, no vitals damaged. Heals in an hour."

"So why are you willingly here then?"

A breath’s silence, then the sorcerer lets out a dry huff, possibly a half-hearted snort. "Most likely, this thing alerts Fury the moment it's separated from my body."

“You must be dreading that,” she comments on the lousiest excuse of the century.

“Also, I’m pampered here fat and easy. Look what pleasurable company I’ve been allowed for my champagne.”

His continuing stare at the mirror and the colourless tone doesn’t let her take the compliment, except for the powerless tug at the corner of her lips, unheeded by his look and probably his attention. She keeps in mind the trickster’s unadmitted purpose with staying, the twisted scheme he must be harbouring – unless he’s not himself any more at all – which might or might not lead to something devastating, to the surrounding world or to himself alone, or to both simultaneously. _Unless he’s not himself any more at all._ But he is, isn’t he? Who else could he be? A void, covered by the old, familiar masks? Or something hard and creviced, rid of any living suppleness under the deceitful hide?

“Loki,” she calls for the secret under the guise unthinking. He doesn’t respond or glance up at her, but the surge of some impatient, morose curiosity carries her on. “Talk to me. Do good to yourself. What happened? How did you get here? Everyone here thought you dead. _Thor_ said so.” That means a lot, Thor’s word on it: Loki must be aware. He better be.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, and at last, she believes to find sincerity within his cool tone. Maybe a hint of dejection. “The truth is, it’s not that easy to recall. I’m not in the position to answer everything. That’s been a futile deal from the start.”

Typically, she isn’t unnerved by not quite understanding what he means; she reaches for what’s clear instead. “Do you remember the time when you got here?”

“Somewhat.”

“Did it hurt?”

He smirks, contrasting his answer. “Immensely.”

“It is a sensitive piece of flesh, the lips.”

“You know it, you’re an expert sufferer of flesh wounds,” he notes glancing at her for the first time since he plopped into the chair exhausted, and oh how she can tell a forgiving look from one that seeks the dismay in her expression right now.

She scowls lightly at his teasing smirk. “And you’re a coward.”

“Am I, now?”

“You are. Too scared to admit you ever have a weak moment.”

“Oh, of that I am not afraid, I assure you. As long as it serves my purpose.”

“What purpose does it serve, then, that you’re holding up an illusion even now, with what seems to me like your last ounce of strength? What do you mean to hide, knots in your hair?”

An unwilled twitch of his eyebrow reveals his surprise, and Sif is glad he would never stoop down to asking how she knows: she could respond with a sheepish shrug at most. He’s not even showing Asgardian clothes.

“It’s merely a gesture of respect to one another, showing a fine demeanour,” he tells her in a tone deceptively close to apologetic.

“Well, it’s nothing new that we have different ideas about respect.”

“Do you find me disrespectful to you?”

“Do you ever respect anyone, Loki?”

“Tell me your idea of respect, perhaps I can go with that.”

She is silent for a second while absently lifting the empty glass to her lips. “Mine is showing the truth,” she answers then. “Honesty says: _I respect you because we’re both living beings of the same kind; there is no need for veils_."

He chuckles quietly and empties his glass without replying.

The warmaiden ventures on: "What are you wearing for real, striped pyjamas? Or ones of some disadvantageous colour?”

“I believe you’re missing exactly the point,” he smiles at her, in a guarded way that doesn't tell if it's warm or rather sharp. “Boasting with your genuine, instinctual, primal self is not what you do to friends.”

“Am I a friend to you?”

Maybe this is what champagne does on earth. Gives you the power of insight, or just eyes to see into the other.

“The most naïve question you could ask me, Sif.” Or the most unsettling one to him, Sif thinks. “You’re certainly the closest to it here.”

“Then heed what I ask of you,” she requests. “Don’t use an illusion when you talk to me.”

He subtly shakes his head, his lips tight but his face unsolvable. Then, as if at a whim, he obeys. The illusion melts off him; it reveals a steel blue shirt with matching cotton pants, smooth cheeks and wavy hair tied into a bun behind the neck with a rubber band. Even the unusually loose attire showcases him as the man with the thinnest hips. She blinks at the unexpected sight but tactfully doesn’t comment.

“I don’t get to choose,” he states like he’s being accused. "Not even the hair. But I sincerely hope that you're at least content now. Which doesn’t authorise you to pass on your observations to anyone."

“Thank you,” Sif responds curtly, with her attention on his relivening gestures.

"Your gratitude is well placed, and now, if you’ll pardon me," he grunts under his breath while reapplying a fine appearance of elegant repose: a thin, lustreless juniper leather vest, knit tight over a generally dark and never not intricately woven attire.

Sif smirks and rolls her eyes at his vanity. While he moves over to the champagne and refills their glasses, she gathers the courage to ask what has been fidgeting in her mind since a previous note.

“Say, what would your answer have been back then?” she utters as he sits back straight, void of any obvious signs of fatigue. “Even earlier, before… _everything_. If I had ended up asking for some reason, would you have named me as a friend?”

“That little private affair of ours was quite different from norms, wouldn’t you say? Your inquiry makes me wonder in which box it was placed in your world view.”

“I never sat down to think about it.” (Maybe she simply took him for granted.) “I realised only after a long while how obscure it was to me. But you observed people with such delight and thoroughness; was it different in your own case? You must have had a definition of me, at least, by the end.”

Loki closes his eyes for the time of a suppressed sigh; she finds that the notion still makes them look larger, just like in the past.

"We were still young, although at the time, it seemed like a long journey behind us.” He speaks in a soft and even tone fitting the reminiscence. “We thought of ourselves that we’ve seen all, and thus everything different from before reached us unprepared; as did your growing into the magnificent warrior you are today. I, too, need, or needed, time to accept your new place in our lives, your position and your possible futures in relation to mine," he admits while leaning back in the chair, once again facing the mirror wall.

" _Need_ _or_ _needed_?"

He gazes before himself in brooding, perhaps waiting for the conversation to get outdated, while she forces herself to stare at her knees instead of him in anticipation for the answer. Then he glances up at the maiden and steadily throws out the divertive question. "So you agree that you've changed?"

Her teeth graze the edge of the glass behind her lips, resisting the desire to reach after the slipping answer; she knows it would only afford him to play and evade more, entertaining him at her loss. "I'm nothing new. What you see as change must be something else."

"Like what?"

"I can't know what's on your mind, Loki." She blames the brevity on the champagne and she asks away: "What is the change you see?"

The question tenses him up unexpectedly. Though his eyes are fixed on her without falter, she knows his purposefully veiled reluctance without looking. She only sees his shrug from the corner of her eyes.

"Tell me," she pesters the boy whom she used to know and whom he seems to become just now. Curiosity, yes, that's all that makes her selfish like this.

"You're more resourceful," he points out finally.

Both of them are aware that his thinking is less shallow than this generic compliment, but she doesn’t wish to embarrass herself by demanding a more eloquent reply. Dropping the vain topic, she turns back towards him.

"You've changed, too. I haven’t seen you lash out as much lately."

He frowns at that. "I barely ever lashed out."

"I remember differently," she insists while sipping from her drink in hope to hide the teasing smile on her lips. He’s no fool, though, the sulk in the corner of his mouth is knowing.

"Yeah? Well, at least I knew the time and place for unthinking fervour. Or was it me who deliberately ran into the enemy’s blade at least three times per battle?”

“Not deliberately, though.”

“It’s not fair: I’m forced to settle for your word, because I haven’t been able to see through that peculiar indulgence up to this day.”

“And I take great pleasure in retaining this one mystery before the collector of secrets.”

Their soft laughter is separate, happens only for their own respective selves, and the other's voice brushing against theirs feels a bit uncomfortable. There is a minute's silent recall of memories before Loki stands up.

“Do you feel numb anywhere?” he asks then measuring her huddled form, and she recognises the approaching end of their chatter.

“I’m fine.”

“Check carefully. No unfeeling limbs? Fingers? Ears?”

“None.”

“Any twitching muscles?”

“I’m fine, Loki.”

“Of course you are, now that I’ve taken care of the thing in you. Were you aware it was a parasite?”

“A parasite?” she repeats it mild start against the venom green of his iris.

“Good. I was prepared to kill you barehanded just now if you had known about it.”

“I would have let you know,” she reassures him, because she feels she owes him that.

“Would you, now?” It’s more an acknowledgement than a doubtful question, so she doesn’t respond. “I’ll leave you to retreat for a rest then,” he says, and placing his glass on the table, he stands before the sealed door with hands neatly before him. “Please tell the Director I’m ready for his reprimand any time.”

“Why would you be reprimanded? You just saved me.”

The trickster leers at her over his shoulder, apparently heedless of the sorceric illusion melting off him: the human-made seal activated under his skin. “Because I’ve destroyed your leech. I took pleasure in chasing it down slowly, piece by piece. It had a consciousness I was able to contact upon touch, and I basked in its fear, in its realisation that there was nowhere to hide. Now that I think about it, these folks must have been excited to study it in sake of the greater good.”

A cold shiver runs along her spine as the memory (Hallucination?) of being picked apart flashes through her mind, and she gulps down the rest of her drink to cover up the sensation. Multiple locks click and hiss inside the opening door, and Loki steps into the circle of armed guards like he’s heading for his coronation.


	12. Chapter 12

-o-O-o- 

Mother was gone.

It meant so many things his calculating mind struggled to comprehend it all for now.

Asgard without its Queen. The world without the wisdom to answer questions of importance rather than the ones asked. No more lenient fondness against Loki’s depravity. (The words he let her go with...) No more soup. No new books. No one left to speak for the condemned out there and raise a chance to regain his freedom. A forever in here. An eternity of _nothing_ ahead.

 _Nothing_.

Mother was gone.

He was desperate to seek the pain of her loss, but his mind wrapped tightly around the aeons of _nothing_. It made his core tremble in fear. It twisted his consciousness into a dizzying spiral, it made the alabaster walls close in on him.

He was this worthless. His will was nothing against the vortex drawing him in day by day.

There were times when the nightmares got interrupted by long not seen dreams that had recurred in the past. He could perceive a kind of progress, but the tension remained. He wasn’t chasing any more; he lingered in one place, waiting in silent defeat. Slowly drowning in ire. Taming his rage not because he wanted to but because he had no choice.

Wisdoms claimed that even vile beings supported the world’s working; heroes were born because they existed – a dragon was needed to create a knight. The sense of unfairness was an essential part of a monster’s birth. So where did one belong if he didn’t wish for destruction but was built to bring about decay? If he tried but it was impossible to add _good_ to the world despite his intentions? Was he to choose between two paths only: turning into the fiend he was meant to be, or hunching over and letting himself be kicked about as a monster deserved to be treated? Were there no other options than these?

Right now, he loathed that from the deepest pit of his wailing heart. He shivered whenever his thoughts swept him to the dilemma he didn’t want, the notion of a direction to choose, a place to find himself. It was still soothing compared to the hours when the abandonment, the _nothing_ lit his consciousness with its piercing reality.

Thor found him in the middle of this turmoil over the transparent barrier.

 _I’m so afraid, Thor, I’m shamefully afraid_ , yelped a thin voice inside the fallen prince at his sight. _Why did you come, will you come again to break up the_ nothing _into bearable slices, or-…?_

He acted his chosen role over the inner ceremony with ease. Then the voice stopped dumbfounded when it occurred he’d be leaving the cage; although Thor had not come to share their grief, Loki felt himself tremble finely with reverence as they made their way out. Deceitful nostalgia lurked around him, and a giddy, scornful display helped him keep away from the gullible sensation. It helped him remember after his lengthy absence from people that neither of them were who they used to be. He sensed that this Thor lacked the well known enthusiasm towards the upcoming trials of strength. For the first time in Loki’s perception, he was preparing for the war in its barest sense. And the sorcerer contrasted him, just like before. Loki was no longer a grudging sufferer of Thor’s doings; he failed to care what Thor would bring about heedless of the logical flow of events. Thor and _his people_ weren’t a variable in his tactical observations any more. Not even after the handcuffs coiled around his wrists, nor after the boastfully displayed scorn of Thor’s lady. This time undisturbed by the lowly treatment, he relished the sensation of having an unnoticed hand feeling up the threads of events, soon to tangle them at his own liking.

He recognised the metallic glint in the corner of his eyes before the blade cuddled up to his neck: the one that wouldn’t once draw his blood in the past. The dubious gesture amused him; even more so as he got to take a good look at the Warmaiden: more a woman than ever before, her hair like she’d prepared for a tryst, her dark eyes sparkling unafraid to take in the world’s quirks, the corner of her lips claiming a snippet of his smile during her grim but hollow threat. Untouched by the menace of this free-running war criminal, she stood tall and secure as ever. She was right in her place, he observed behind his cheekily dealt nicety.

Those few seconds of encounter were enough to boost his mood further; the speeding up of the events reassured him that the _nothing_ was away, and it was away for good by his claws and teeth, he decided the moment his fingers slid onto the fugitive vehicle’s control stick. He laughed into the wind while flying as the light, giddy over freedom from the _forevernothing_ , speeding to leave behind even the trace of the dismaying possibility.

And then the poisoned spear ran through his chest.

It was a short term toxin, used on stealth missions amongst all because it dissipated without a trace after doing its work. All he had to do was heal himself until it wore off. It was an intricate challenge, balancing on the brink of life to play the part right.

That he had pulled it off made him laugh weakly at first, right there on the ground, alone with the powdery sky weighing on him. At one point during the battle, he had suddenly started feeling so exhausted that even if he had died, he’d have let it go with a shrug. He’d have gone with his big-hearted brother weeping above him overwhelmed by all the regrets induced, broken for once, and that notion filled his chest with the pleasant scorch of martyrdom.

But now was not the time for daydreams; the plan was already complete in his mind, and it required plenty of work before he could finally lean back for a long desired rest, nestled in the throne. Whoever’s throne, really, that was nothing more than his measliest concern anymore.

-T-T-T-

She fidgets in her chair uncomfortably as the film goes on. The Director is her sole company in the curtained room at the moment, a finger tugging at his chin, his eye fixed on the screen like hers. Sif would like to turn her look away from her own agonized form in the video, but she has complied to the request of watching it and possibly telling something humans couldn’t discover by themselves. Fury doesn’t show discomfort over her humiliating display, and a thought nags at the back of her mind, that this is the lowest she has sunk before humans so far. Meanwhile, she didn’t imagine getting to this point either, which is a notion to consider.

Her scar lingers – on the skin and not in her bones, she keeps telling herself. But at nights, when her mind releases all guards for sleep, she tends to startle up to the sensation of the very core of her limbs _crawling_ , and she knows it’s a memory or fear haunting, because she’s been listening inwards intently whether she wanted to or not, and she wouldn’t hesitate to take measures – ask for help – warn her surroundings – if she noticed a hint of slipping control. She treads to a mirror in these waking hours to see there is no change in the wound magically healed as well as possible, probably. It is still made of forking trenches; now a darker shade of her own skin, spreading faintly across her chest and shoulder, up her neck, a blemish on the left side of her face. A battle scar, sign of tackled monsters, pride of a warrior. (Reminder of fragility.) Proof of bravery. She thinks of the knives these meek humans can make to slice into an Asgardian.

The screen on the wall shows the classified recording from that room several days ago. She doesn’t remember all the protesting, nor the need for defence as she curled up around her own self, with the wound throbbing darkly along her face and neck, looming through the skin of her arm below the torn sleeve of the cardigan. She doesn’t remember getting rid of the cast either.

Loki stands facing the mirror wall long after the guards are gone, refusing to look at her.

“Was he waiting?” Sif asks overcoming her reluctance to reveal her musing.

“Most likely,” Fury answers. “Maybe he was trying to make the glass explode with his brain, for all I know. Do you think he could see through that mirror?”

“I can’t tell.” She looks at him, wondering if Loki’s glare did find this man’s face through the opaque barrier; but Fury’s look keeps the secret and urges her to turn her attention back to the recording. Pointless self-torment for now, really, as nothing is visible of the entity they wish to observe, only her own agonised trembling on the barren surface.

Loki backs up from the wall slowly when she’s about to fall off. He sets her right on the table and holds her there while looking up and around the ceiling. His head turns towards the small table holding the strangest human tools. He brushes locks out of the maiden’s face before his palm lies over her forehead. She tries to snap her head away from the touch, and the sorcerer lets it happen; he sits back into the chair by the bed, facing her, fingers intertwined between his knees.

Sif waits tensely for the next move; she resists the urge to glance at Fury for a hint of the upcoming, afraid she’d miss the turning moment and have to watch it again.

“He’s helpless,” she mutters after an endless wait.

“He’s trying to bullshit us. He did treat you after he realised no help was coming. We had no means to cure you, Lady Sif, he’s the only one you could count on at that moment.”

“I think he knew that.”

The man looks at her sideways while choosing his words. “I respect your opinion.”

“As I do yours, she answers looking back at him. It leaves an air of tension in the room, too trivial to be addressed right now.

She sees herself grasp the edges of the table under her, her breaths shivering through gritted teeth. Loki then stands up with unexpected suddenness and approaches the mirror wall again. Sif believes to know an attack is coming; and then nothing happens. An arm folds around Loki’s waist, another elbow leans on it, fingers tug at his lips, a long sported habit that accompanies his brooding. Sometimes it’s nothing but a show, claims the maiden’s past experience, but she’s unable to tell from this recording.

She turns her look to the one-eyed man again; the liesmith’s truth from their last meeting rings in her ears. “Did you know?” she asks the Director. “You did all those tests on me, did you know something was alive inside my body?”

The man returns her look. “It has just started showing signs of such activity,” he answers calmly. “If we can really speak about it coming alive, it happened within the short period between two examinations. Before that, it was just an unknown substance. Last time you visited the lab, my medics discovered signs similar to primal life forms. But nothing like truly sentient beings. Fungi give those kinds of life signs. Or bacteria, for example. Only, what lurked inside you was one single thing, not millions of tiny others. You were brought in two days after the last test: its development must have sped up unexpectedly then.”

Her gaze snaps back to the screen as Loki moves out of the closed posture, in response to the warmaiden’s movement. She has clambered onto an elbow, her injured arm supporting her rise into sitting. Loki sweeps it out from under her with a deft movement and diverts her limbs from their further tries to control her situation. While she mutters dishevelled pleads in her disoriented fight, he is silent. A hand holds her chin in place, the other lies over her forehead. The screen starts flickering mildly, and Fury glances over at the warmaiden, requesting an explanation. She subtly shakes her head without looking away from the recorded events: she’s one of the many who couldn’t tell Loki’s sorcery apart from a fairy light ever since the beginning.

But the events continue unfolding, the static noise increases within the replaying device. The sight blurs to show only their outlines most of the time, but the sound remains clear enough to transmit curses that the maiden spits at the sorcerer – not in any languages known in Asgard but the Allspeak conveys their meaning. Runt of monsters. Puny bragger that none will believe. He’ll be flayed and his monster-hide stuffed for all eternity to marvel at Loki Trick-skin. He himself will get to choose what skin to wear next, each day another. He’ll get his brain replaced, to some idiot’s that will put his seidr to better service. Or to an ape’s, let’s see what an ape makes of his abilities.

The hairs stand up on her back. These are not her thoughts. She was not, she would never–

“You understand it,” Fury’s stoic observation intrudes her inner panic.

“Insults,” she breathes, forcing her tone to stay level. “Low threats, nothing I would mean when sane.”

It’s suddenly the most burning question whether Loki knows that. In the fizzling video, he listens to the foreign barks and lets her kneel up and tower over him, but at the same time, his firm hold on the wounded arm prevents her from leaving the pedestal.

The moment he lets go and takes a step back, with his open palm lingering in the air for a second longer, the screen clears up once again: Sif can clearly see her own self slump down and seek support by the wall at her back. Her flinch at the sorcerer’s look at him shows expectation of an attack she’d be unable to fend off. Loki doesn’t heed it, but neither does he take offence; the movement as he reaches after her redrawing hand, this time the intact one, is rather nonchalant. She leaves her fingers in the hold of his hand but resists the pull.

It’s the first time Loki speaks, the softness rigid in his voice: “Lie down.”

As she clearly prefers to stay like that, he repeats it in the same manner: “Lie down on the table, or I’ll dismember you and line the pieces up there myself.”

In demonstration, he releases the hand and reaches for the longest knife among the metallic human tools. The maiden takes up the required posture in a moment, though the trembling of her muscles is beyond control; her eyes larger than ever as they follow the trickster’s movements.

“Well done,” he compliments her. “What you got to work with is a rather misfortunate match. This is the end of your journey. Now, do not start trashing, or I might run this into you. You will comply to avoid the pain, won’t you?”

The maiden hurries to agree with nods. She endures motionlessly as the sorcerer cuts the soft earthen clothes off her right half, until she lies mostly exposed save for the white linen strips wrapped around her torso and upper arm; the partially bandaged wound forks across her chest and shoulder, dark like decaying flesh against her skin.

Sif, now safely in the curtained room, swallows down the knot in her gullet when the sorcerer in the video starts peeling the plasters off her arm. That he uses another human tool, a pair of forceps for it puts light on another fact. “He mustn’t touch the wound. I change when he does.”

“Indeed,” Fury leaves it at that and doesn’t reveal any more of his possible knowledge.

Although the screen shows a slightly blurred and faded image, the infection appears to consist of muscles in a constant strife to crawl. And then she can’t see the rest; the noise in the picture and sound rises into chaos; the images occasionally jumping to a halt show the two figures in the same position, nothing from what Sif remembers now from her strife against being dissected. She feels relieved that it wasn’t something cameras could record for her, and others, to watch it repeatedly.

The screen goes black. Fury discards the remote control and leans back in the chair facing her across the desk. “I need you to retell exactly what you said to him when he contacted the wound,” he starts without further ado.

She shakes her head in brooding, reluctant to form those hideous words on her lips again. Naturally, she wouldn’t tell something like that just to feed humans’ curiosity. “I’d guess,” she says timidly, “it was against his person. The things he values, maybe; at least what I think he does.”

“And what do you think he values?”

She doesn’t cower away from his look while telling the truth. “I would not answer that even if I could be sure. Not unless it’s the key to your victory over the real enemy we’re facing.”

His unmoving figure doesn’t reveal if her refusal reached him unexpected or not, but he doesn’t press it further. Instead, he shares: “Some believe that the thing in you might have been reading his thoughts.”

“ _His_ thoughts?” she repeats with hopeful relief in her chest.

“How possible do you think it is?”

“Well, I could only guess, just like you.”

“Why else would it have changed for the time, and only for the time, when he touched it?”

“I was my complete opposite while the thing was inside me, that’s all I can tell,” she claims hoarsely.

“What did you feel during that time?”

“I don’t remember,” she mutters in deep thought, before she perks up suddenly. “He was talking to the parasite. It took over me entirely. The reason I don’t remember any of this is that it was all the creature’s perception.”

“It’s early to call it a creature. It can be synthetic material of high intelligence.”

“You mean created by humans?”

Arms firmly crossed, Fury keeps silent.

“You know something,” she derives.

The man stirs out of his sitting, his intertwined fingers lie over the desk opposite her, his look bores into hers. “I _wish_ I’d know something. Something I’d have learnt by now if that thing had ended up under our microscope. But that knowledge is sealed within Loki’s mind now. Thanks to _Real Power_ , who denies even having heard the clear orders, our opportunity is gone and we’re in the same place as before, chance to avoid a similar accident just as great.”

“It is unfortunate. But to be able to keep helping you, I have to know whatever you do know about it. You know where this thing is from, don’t you?”

“We need exactly the help you’re giving us right now, Lady Sif. We had an agreement at the start.”

“That you give me full insight at the matter.”

“And so would _you_ , you said. Yet here we are, withholding information from each other. I propose a truce. I don’t ask about Loki’s hidden shortcomings, you don’t ask about the thing, we call it even and move on.”

“I will not protect someone else’s justice, only my own.”

“You haven’t been hindered at it. In fact, that’s exactly what you were doing when you set your own work back a few miles, remember?” As the warmaiden is silent, he continues in a polite tone, explaining. “You missed our entry point because you had to disappear from there until now. A cover story will not be enough to appease him, it wouldn’t be even if you had any acting skills. Even if you return, you’ll have lost confidence. We’ll need to find another way in.”

“I have all the skills a warrior needs! I will stop him,” she promises, voice heavy with self-convincing determination. “I can fight now.”

“You alone fighting an open battle means nothing, don’t you get it?” Fury argues, folding his fingers over the table to restrain his irate tension over the general Aesir bull-headedness.

“Do not underestimate-”

“I know you want to help, Lady Sif, and your alliance is a key element for us right now!” he barks over her. “I mean no disrespect, but you _have_ to be aware that we need you strategically, not as a one-man offence! One Asgardian makes no difference against a hundred more! Have you learnt nothing from that trickster in your thousands of years together?”

“One thousand at most,” she corrects quieter.

“Your former task here is done,” says the man ignoring her note, his look at her dark. “The plan has failed. We’ve got a huge information gap, the target has long noticed, it’s a child’s play for him now, by the time we’re back in the field he’ll have made a great leap ahead. Right now, we have no idea what we’ll find once we hop in again. So I’m not sending you there for now.”

“That is out of question.”

“You’ll await further instructions, Lady Sif,” he says sternly, “and you’ll stay away from New Asgard. You’ll have us tiny mortals determine what action is and isn’t dangerous for you to take. Unless you comply to these orders, you are no longer in SHIELD’s employment, and our agreement is nullified along with your authorisation to see the captive.”

She bites the inside of her mouth against responding, because then she would be leaving the complex and heading east in the next hour, and then use her last breath to protect the cause in hope for a place in Valhalla. Which she might not even earn if she fights knowing there is a straighter way to achieve victory. There, Valhalla is ruined amidst all the hundreds of other things, thanks to Midgard. She loathes this lack of control.

“You better plot wisely,” she warns. “If you prevent me from doing all in my power to win, we’ll have to walk separate paths.”

“And I hope to enjoy your support further on,” Fury nods in a tone that could as well be appeasing in his case. “Where to go next is under debate for the moment, but I can tell you one thing: we’re holding the key to victory. Only, we need a way to access it without destroying our world.”

“The key?” she frowns in confusion.

“We need the God of Mischief to be ready to give answers, or those old farts in the council won’t agree to any covert strategies involving him. They don’t care for personal peeves, and Loki has no idea it’s them he needs to play and not me. He refuses to reveal anything, he aggravates me with that theatrical sulk, he demands another bargain. Get his mind off these.”

The warmaiden feels blood rush out of her cheeks, into her stomach. “Your ambition is foolish,” she points out. 

“I’ve never gotten anything done without a foolish move or two,” the man tells her. “If I had other cards at hand, I’d discard this one without hesitation. But the Titan has… greatly screwed up our powers. As soon as we’re on track, I’ll need whatever he knows about the parasite. He mentioned a _misfortunate match_ : what does that mean? What did he see, feel, hear, exchange with the thing? Find out if he’ll take another champagne in exchange, or anything else we can consider. Thanks to _your_ valorous self-sacrificial move, I’m out of his favour right now, so you do the job, Your Warriorship, if you please.”

Her eyes close but she can’t hide the smirk escaping her mask. “Is it because of my act, or your grudge for his disobedience?”

“Both then,” Fury admits bluntly. “I do wish to march in there and release a few bullets into his head to get rid of this entire nuisance. Happy now?”

She does feel somewhat giddy inside. Loki’s lousily staged open denial of his guilt, his open defiance of an order despite his position, feels like he’s on the same side as her now. Not to get lost in gullible daydreams, however. It fills her with a warm surge of pride nevertheless, a wee bit taller again, though she never noticed she was slumping. It must have been from the wound.

“You know where to find me,” she nods before leaving the room.

Fury leans back, forehead supported by fingers while he mumbles: “It was a dirty move, Natasha, leaving us here without a competent successor of your skills.”


End file.
